Aspetti delle joint venture di ricerca: applicazione all'industria dei semiconduttori

摘要

Research Joint Ventures represenf a form of cooperation, at the Research and De-velopment stage between otherwise_competing firms, enteredjn order to share risks, costs and results of innovative activity. The present paper analyses specifically the for-mation of these agreements in the Semiconductor industiy and highlights the role that different levels of technological spillovers have on the level of investment in R&D and on joint profits. The empirical part was performed by analysing the Federai Register filings for Rjv's in the US from 1985 to 2002, reported in the GORE database, focusing especial-ly on the Semiconductor industry. Successively, the demand and cost functions were estimated for a segrnent of the industry, namely for Discrete Products and Micropro-cessors, allowing for a better understanding of the cost structure and its components. The estimated results have been then used in a numerical simulaticil, where the level of technological spillover was allowed to vary in the context of a model of strategie in-teraction describing the formation of a Rjv composed only by a subset of firms in the industry. The main findings of the literature, with regards to sign and relative magnitu-de of variables, are confirmed in the chosen industry.