Foreign Direct Investment and the Incentives to Innovate and Imitate*
提出外国直接投资通过模仿原创产品影响国内企业的新渠道，利用中国面板数据发现外资增加导致国内企业更多模仿而非创新。
Abstract We propose a new channel of FDI spillovers on domestic firms, which operates through imitation of original products. Domestic heterogeneous firms may not introduce any new products, introduce a new product line (innovate), or develop a variety that is a close substitute to an existing product line (imitate). The presence of foreign firms generates incentives for imitation because they introduce original products that are vertically differentiated from domestic products. Using firm‐level panel data for China, we find that increased FDI presence in a given industry leads to more imitation, but not necessarily more innovation, by domestic firms.