Lee Branstetter

Associate Professor of Economics, Department of Social and Decision Sciences and Heinz School of Policy and Management

Bio

Lee Branstetter joined the Heinz School faculty in 2006 as a tenured associate professor. He has a joint appointment with the Department of Social and Decision Sciences (SDS). Branstetter is also a faculty research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves as an associate editor of the Journal of International Economics. Prior to coming to Carnegie Mellon, he was the Daniel J. Stanton Associate Professor of Business and the Director of the International Business Program at Columbia Business School. Branstetter has also taught at the University of California, Davis, where he was the Director of the East Asian Studies Program, and at Dartmouth College. He has served as a consultant to the OECD Science and Technology Directorate, the Advanced Technology Program of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the World Bank. In recent years, Branstetter has been a research fellow of the Keio University Global Security Research Institute and a visiting fellow of the Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry in Japan. Branstetter holds a B.A. in Economics and Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences (MMSS) from Northwestern University, and he earned his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard in 1996.

Education

Ph.D., Economics, Harvard University

Research

Branstetter’s research interests include the economics of technological innovation, international economics, industrial organization, and economic growth in East Asia, with a particular focus on China and Japan. His papers span a wide range of topics, including the effects of patent laws on international technology transfer, the role of multinationals in the diffusion of technology across national boundaries, the impact of research consortia on the research productivity of participating firms, and the evolution of trade and investment policies in the People’s Republic of China. His work has appeared in leading journals including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the RAND Journal of Economics, and the Journal of International Economics.

Selected Publications

• “Do Stronger Intellectual Property Rights Increase International Technology Transfer? Empirical Evidence from U.S. Firm-Level Data,” with Raymond Fisman (Columbia) and Fritz Foley (HBS). Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 121, no. 1, pp. 321-349.
• “When Do Research Consortia Work Well and Why? Evidence from Japanese Panel Data,” with Mariko Sakakibara (UCLA), American Economic Review, vol. 92, no. 1, March 2002, pp. 143-159.
• “Do Stronger Patents Induce More Innovation? Evidence from the 1988 Japanese Patent Law Reforms,” with Mariko Sakakibara (UCLA), RAND Journal of Economics, vol. 32, no. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 77-100. Reprinted in R. Towse and R. Holzhauer, (eds.), The Economics of Intellectual Property, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2001. Reprinted in K. Maskus, (ed.), The WTO, Intellectual Property, and the Knowledge Economy, a forthcoming volume in the series Critical Perspectives on the Global Trading System and the WTO, Edward Elgar Press.
• “Is Foreign Direct Investment a Channel of Knowledge Spillovers: Evidence from Japan’s FDI in the United States,” Journal of International Economics, vol. 68, February 2006, pp. 325-344.
• “Trade and Foreign Direct Investment in China: A Political Economy Approach,” with Robert Feenstra (UC-Davis), Journal of International Economics, vol. 58, no. 2, December 2002, pp. 335-358.
• “Are Knowledge Spillovers International or Intranational in Scope? Microeconometric Evidence from Japan and the United States,”Journal of International Economics, vol. 53, February 2001, pp. 53-79.
• “Japanese Research Consortia: A Microeconometric Analysis of Industrial Policy,” with Mariko Sakakibara (UCLA), Journal of Industrial Economics, vol. 46, no. 2, June 1998, pp. 207-233.
• “Measuring the Impact of U.S. Research Consortia,” with Mariko Sakakibara (UCLA), Managerial and Decision Economics, vol. 24, Spring 2003, pp. 51-69.
• “Looking for International Knowledge Spillovers: A Review of the Literature with Suggestions for New Approaches,” Annales d’Economie et de Statistique No. 49/50, 1998, pp. 517-540. Reprinted in D. Encaoua et. al., (eds.), The Economics and Econometrics of Innovation, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.
•  “Do Stronger Patents Induce More Local Innovation?” Journal of International Economic Law, vol. 7, no. 2, 2004, pp. 359-370. Reprinted in Keith Maskus and Jerome Reichman, eds., International Public Goods and Transfer of Technology Under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime, Cambridge University Press, 2005.