美国的大型企业与新技术发展轨迹

Federal Reserve Board, Washington, D.C.ISSN 1936-2854 (Print)ISSN 2767-3898 (Online) Mega Firms and New Technological Trajectories in the U.S. Joonkyu Choi, Serguey Braguinsky, Yuheng Ding, Karam Jo, Seula Kim 2025-060 Please cite this paper as:Choi, Joonkyu, Serguey Braguinsky, Yuheng Ding, Karam Jo, and Seula Kim (2025). “MegaFirms and New Technological Trajectories in the U.S.,” Finance and Economics Discus-sion Series 2025-060.Washington:Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2025.060. NOTE: Staff working papers in the Finance and Economics Discussion Series (FEDS) are preliminarymaterials circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment.The analysis and conclusions set forthare those of the authors and do not indicate concurrence by other members of the research staff or theBoard of Governors. References in publications to the Finance and Economics Discussion Series (other thanacknowledgement) should be cleared with the author(s) to protect the tentative character of these papers. Mega Firms and New Technological Trajectoriesin the U.S.∗ Joonkyu Choi†Serguey Braguinsky‡Yuheng Ding§Karam Jo¶Seula Kim‖ July 16, 2025 Abstract We provide evidence that mega firms have played an increasingly important rolein shaping new technological trajectories in recent years.While the share of novelpatents—defined as patents introducing new combinations of technological components—produced by mega firms declined until around 2000, it has rebounded sharply sincethen. Furthermore, we find that the technological impact and knowledge diffusion ofnovel patents by mega firms have grown relative to those by non-mega firms after2001.We also explore potential drivers of this trend, presenting evidence that therise in novel patenting by mega firms is tied to their disproportionate increase in cashholdings and the expansion of their technological scope.Our findings highlight anoverlooked positive role of mega firms in the economywide innovation process. Keywords:Mega Firms, Innovation, Novel Patents, Knowledge DiffusionJEL Codes:O31, O33, O34, L11, L25 1Introduction The concentration of economic activities in the largest businesses, so-called mega firms,has been increasing over the past few decades (Autor et al., 2020; Yeh et al., 2022; Hsiehand Rossi-Hansberg, 2023; Kwon et al., 2024).Recent literature explores two broad setsof interpretations for this trend.Some studies have emphasized the rise in market power(De Loecker et al., 2020), possibly driven by increasing entry barriers, regulation, and lob-bying activities that stifle competition (Guti´errez and Philippon, 2019; Covarrubias et al.,2020). Other studies have cast doubt on this interpretation (Foster et al., 2022) and insteademphasize increased competition or winner-takes-all dynamics caused by globalization andtechnological advances that enable large firms to exploit economies of scale (Autor et al.,2020; Hsieh and Rossi-Hansberg, 2023). A key issue in this debate is the role of mega firms in innovation and knowledge diffusion.Several studies raise concerns that mega firms may be strategically building patent thicketsto hinder technological competition (Akcigit and Ates, 2023), reallocating inventors towardlarge incumbents (Akcigit and Goldschlag, 2023), or even acquiring innovative startups todiscontinue competing R&D projects to preempt future competition (Cunningham et al.,2021). Taken together, this evidence raises the possibility that mega firms may be slowingthe pace of innovation and limiting the spread of technological advances across the broadereconomy. Against the backdrop of concerns about the negative impact of mega firms, this paperpresents new evidence that highlights a different and understudied role of mega firms: theirgrowing contribution to pioneering new technological trajectories that open up opportunitiesfor subsequent innovation by other firms. To this end, we employ the concept ofnovel patents,defined as patents that introduce new combinations of technological components that had notpreviously been used together (Fleming et al., 2007; Akcigit et al., 2013; Strumsky and Lobo,2015; Verhoeven et al., 2016; Pezzoni et al., 2022). This definition aligns with Schumpeter’s(1911) view of innovation as new combinations of existing resources (Akcigit et al., 2013) and Weitzman’s (1998) characterization of innovation as a recombination process. While priorstudies show that novel patents are more likely to be antecedents of radical breakthrough(Verhoeven et al., 2016), we provide extensive evidence that they are also strongly correlatedwith a range of indicators of novelty, technological impact, and creative destruction (e.g.,Kogan et al., 2017; Akcigit and Kerr, 2018; Arts et al., 2021; Kelly et al., 2021; Kalyani,2024; Jo and Kim, 2024). We also demonstrate that our main finding is robust to using analternative, text-based measure of “breakthrough” patents developed by Kelly et al. (2021). To fi