ABSTRACT

All major research programs that study technological change find common ground in emphasizing the explanatory significance of domestic institutions in determining national innovation rates. And yet, after decades of research, this domestic-centered approach has yet to identify any particular set of institutions or policies that explain variation in innovative performance over time and across cases. Recently, a new research program has emerged which argues that this bottleneck to theory development is due to a critical omitted variable bias: international security. This article probes one facet of this argument by examining the relationship between international threat environments and national innovation rates. The regression results show a positive effect of threats on national innovation, a finding that is robust across different specifications and periods of analysis. Additionally, unlike previous studies that find no significant relationship between security alliances and military innovation, the opposite is true of threat: states faced with high external threat environments tend to innovate at the defense technology frontier.

摘要

所有研究技术变革的主要研究项目都在强调国内机构在确定国家创新率方面的解释性意义方面找到了共同点。然而，经过数十年的研究，这种以国内为中心的方法尚未确定任何特定的制度或政策来解释创新绩效随时间和案例的变化。最近，出现了一个新的研究计划，该计划认为这一理论发展的瓶颈是由于一个关键的遗漏变量偏差：国际安全。本文通过研究国际威胁环境与国家创新率之间的关系来探讨这一论点的一个方面。回归结果显示威胁对国家创新的积极影响，在不同的规范和分析时期内是稳健的发现。此外，与先前的研究发现安全联盟与军事创新之间没有显着关系不同，威胁情况恰恰相反：面临高外部威胁环境的国家倾向于在国防技术前沿进行创新。