The Impact of Interfirm Cooperative R&D on Firm Performance: Evidence from Chinese Publicly Listed Companies

With the development of the economy, collaborative R&D has become an important tool for Chinese companies to improve their performance. This paper explores the relationship between inter-firm collaborative R&D and firm performance in terms of both financial performance and technological innovation performance. Using panel data of more than 1,300 Chinese listed companies from 2007 to 2016 and using multiple regression analysis, we find that inter-firm collaborative R&D has a positive impact on technological innovation performance and potential market competitiveness, but a negative impact on profitability indicators. In addition, we further divided the companies into technology “leaders” and “followers,” and the results showed that the benefits of collaborative R&D are greater for the followers.