Assistant Professor of Economics Dong Cheng has recently published three papers in peer-reviewed journals, offering new insights into automobile diffusion, innovation strategy, and the financing of technological change.
The first paper, “Early 20th Century American Exceptionalism: Production, Trade and Diffusion of the Automobile,” coauthored with Mario J. Crucini (Purdue University), Hyunseung Oh (Federal Reserve Board), and Hakan Yilmazkuday (Florida International University), and published in the Journal of International Economics, assembles newly curated historical data to explain the striking gap in automobile adoption between the United States and the rest of the world by 1929. The study documents a set of sizable price wedges—from export markups and tariffs to distribution costs and gasoline-tax-driven user costs—and demonstrates, through an intuitive adoption framework, that removing these distortions alongside income differences accounts for more than 80% of the global adoption gap.
Cheng’s second paper, “Innovation and Appropriation: Insights From the Chinese Patent Survey,” coauthored with Michael A. Klein (RPI) and Fuat Şener (Union College) and forthcoming in Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, uses rich microdata from China’s Patent Survey to study how firms protect and extract value from innovation. The authors show that although patents remain the dominant appropriation strategy, firms often rely on them for strategic purposes—such as securing external financing or contracting with third-party producers—while using secrecy and first-mover advantage to guard against imitation from competitors. It also finds that firms undertaking the most costly R&D projects exhibit a relative preference for secrecy.
The third publication, “Financing Sources and New Technology Acquisition Strategies: Microeconomic Evidence from the Chinese Patent Survey,” in Finance Research Letters, examines how firms’ financing structures shape their technology acquisition choices. Cheng finds that bank loans and government funding support collaborative or lower-risk strategies, whereas internal cash facilitates more innovation-intensive approaches such as independent and joint R&D. Greater diversity in financing sources is associated with broader strategic scope, though its importance diminishes for patent-rich firms that rely less on external acquisition.
The first paper, “Early 20th Century American Exceptionalism: Production, Trade and Diffusion of the Automobile,” coauthored with Mario J. Crucini (Purdue University), Hyunseung Oh (Federal Reserve Board), and Hakan Yilmazkuday (Florida International University), and published in the Journal of International Economics, assembles newly curated historical data to explain the striking gap in automobile adoption between the United States and the rest of the world by 1929. The study documents a set of sizable price wedges—from export markups and tariffs to distribution costs and gasoline-tax-driven user costs—and demonstrates, through an intuitive adoption framework, that removing these distortions alongside income differences accounts for more than 80% of the global adoption gap.
Cheng’s second paper, “Innovation and Appropriation: Insights From the Chinese Patent Survey,” coauthored with Michael A. Klein (RPI) and Fuat Şener (Union College) and forthcoming in Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, uses rich microdata from China’s Patent Survey to study how firms protect and extract value from innovation. The authors show that although patents remain the dominant appropriation strategy, firms often rely on them for strategic purposes—such as securing external financing or contracting with third-party producers—while using secrecy and first-mover advantage to guard against imitation from competitors. It also finds that firms undertaking the most costly R&D projects exhibit a relative preference for secrecy.
The third publication, “Financing Sources and New Technology Acquisition Strategies: Microeconomic Evidence from the Chinese Patent Survey,” in Finance Research Letters, examines how firms’ financing structures shape their technology acquisition choices. Cheng finds that bank loans and government funding support collaborative or lower-risk strategies, whereas internal cash facilitates more innovation-intensive approaches such as independent and joint R&D. Greater diversity in financing sources is associated with broader strategic scope, though its importance diminishes for patent-rich firms that rely less on external acquisition.