Abstract Cooperative innovation is a popular way for firms to pursue technological innovation and profits. Two important aspects, knowledge spillovers and cartelization, have a considerable impact on firms’ cooperative innovation performance. This paper studies cooperative innovation decisions in a two-level supply chain including an upstream firm and a downstream firm with knowledge spillovers (natural or perfect) and uncertain technology efficiency. To investigate the effects of knowledge spillovers and cartelization, four innovation modes, namely, non-cooperative innovation, innovation cartel, research joint venture and research joint venture cartel, are examined. We obtain several findings: (i) enhancing either firm’s knowledge spillover benefits both firms and the whole supply chain, and the profits of the firms and the chain reach the maximum when the two firms perfectly share their knowledge; (ii) cartelization can help upstream and downstream firms achieve a win–win scenario in a Pareto zone, but the supply chain always benefits; and (iii) both knowledge spillovers and cartelization are beneficial for the supply chain when the demand elasticity is not too small, specifically, with the research joint venture cartel mode being the best and the non-cooperation mode being the worst. Moreover, we extend the model to involve a general probability distribution of stochastic technology efficiency and find that high uncertainty in technology efficiency leads to lower profit for the downstream firm; we also relax a general cost function of technological innovation and discuss the robustness of the theoretical results.

中文翻译：

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知识溢出和卡特尔化对技术效率不确定的合作创新决策的影响

摘要 合作创新是企业追求技术创新和利润的流行方式。知识溢出和卡特尔化两个重要方面对企业的合作创新绩效有相当大的影响。本文研究了具有知识溢出（自然或完美）和不确定技术效率的上游企业和下游企业两级供应链中的合作创新决策。为了研究知识溢出和卡特尔化的影响，研究了四种创新模式，即非合作创新、创新卡特尔、研究合资和研究合资卡特尔。我们获得了几个发现：（i）增强任一公司的知识溢出对公司和整个供应链都有好处，当两个厂商完全共享知识时，厂商和链条的利润达到最大值；(ii) 卡特尔化可以帮助上下游企业在帕累托区实现双赢，但供应链总是受益；(iii) 在需求弹性不太小的情况下，知识溢出和卡特尔化都对供应链有利，特别是研究型合资卡特尔模式最好，非合作模式最差。此外，我们将模型扩展到随机技术效率的一般概率分布，发现技术效率的高度不确定性导致下游企业的利润降低；我们还放宽了技术创新的一般成本函数，并讨论了理论结果的稳健性。