Foreign Competition and Innovation: The Mediating Role of Imitation
研究外国竞争如何通过模仿影响本土企业创新绩效，发现模仿起中介作用且与创新呈倒U型关系，吸收能力调节这一中介效应。
Abstract This study examines the extent to which foreign competition affects the innovation performance of domestic firms through imitation, given firms’ absorptive capacity. In analysing longitudinal firm‐level data from the UK, we find a mediating effect of imitation on the relationship between foreign competition and local firms’ innovation performance, and an inverted U‐shaped relationship between imitation and the innovation performance of local firms. Our findings further reveal that absorptive capacity moderates the mediating effect of imitation, diminishing innovation gains at moderate levels of imitation and mitigating the diminishing innovation performance at high levels of imitation.