IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v94y2026ics1544612326001868.html

The impact of trade secret protection on corporate patenting: evidence from an emerging market

Author

Listed:
  • Liu, Muyan
  • Ying, Qianwei
  • Liu, Jinsong

Abstract

This paper examines how firms in emerging markets adjust their innovation protection strategies as trade secret protection strengthens. Using China’s trade secret protection pilot program and difference-in-difference design, we find that firms located in pilot regions significantly increase patenting after the program’s implementation. Mechanism analyses show that firms shift toward patenting in response to heightened incentives for technology commercialization, capital market financing, and subsidy seeking. We also find that support from local governments and the public is critical to the program’s effectiveness. Overall, our results show that firms’ innovation protection decisions are shaped by not only knowledge spillovers and misappropriation concerns, but also competitive dynamics and access to capital markets and government resources.

Suggested Citation

  • Liu, Muyan & Ying, Qianwei & Liu, Jinsong, 2026. "The impact of trade secret protection on corporate patenting: evidence from an emerging market," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:94:y:2026:i:c:s1544612326001868
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2026.109655

    Download full text from publisher

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ; ; ; ;

    JEL classification:

    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • K11 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Property Law
    • O38 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:94:y:2026:i:c:s1544612326001868. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/frl .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.