From Imitation to Innovation: Where Is all that Chinese R&D Going?

We thank three referees, Daron Acemoglu, Philippe Aghion, Joe Altonji, Ufuk Akcigit, Manuel Amador, Marco Bassetto, Christopher Flynn, Chang-Tai Hsieh, Chad Jones, Patrick Kehoe, Juan Pablo Nicolini, Jesse Perla, Torsten Persson, Chris Tonetti, Daniel Xu, Gianluca Violante, conference participants at the ABFER Annual Conference 2017, the ASSA Annual Meeting 2019, the Bank of Canada-IMF-University of Toronto Meeting on the Chinese Economy, the 2021 China Econometric Society Meeting, CIFAR, The Economics of Creative Destruction (Paris, June 9–12 2021), and seminar participants at the Arizona State University, Cambridge University, Columbia University, Collegio Carlo Alberto, the Federal Reserve of Minneapolis, Fudan University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the National University of Singapore, New York University, Ohio State University, Peking University, Princeton University, Stanford University, Tsinghua University, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, University College London, University of Hong Kong, University of Houston, the University of Notre Dame, University of St. Andrews, and Yale University. Zheng Song acknowledges financial support from the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• June 16, 2020