The concept of international technology spillovers was first introduced in the 1960s by Macgougall when he explored the social benefits of receiving FDI in host countries. However, he did not study it in more detail. In the 1970s and 1980s, the study of technology spillover gradually flourished and eventually developed into an important branch in the field of FDI and external economic theory.
Many scholars at home and abroad have given the definition of technology spillover. For example, Dunning "the direct benefits gained by domestic firms through contact with MNCs" (Dunning, 1993), and Plinglan "the outflow or diffusion of knowledge owned by MNCs along with the exchange of raw materials and the flow of talents in the host country" (Plinglan, 1993). (Pinglan, 1997). He Jie "the indirect effect of FDI on the host country's economic efficiency and ability to grow or develop unconsciously, which can occur within the same industry or between different industries" (He Jie, 2000). Ping Li "promotes the improvement of local technology and productivity level through involuntary diffusion of technology, which is one of the manifestations of economic externality" (Li, 1999). Implicit in the above definition is the basic notion that technology spillovers are benefits that technology leaders bring to host countries involuntarily, and that such benefits are achieved through non-market behavior. Therefore, we define technology spillovers in this paper as follows: technology gains that are involuntarily made by the technology leader to the host country firms through non-market transactions as a result of cross-border economic activities. Here, non-market transactions refer to the acquisition of technology without the sale of technology.
In order to understand the concept of technology spillovers in more depth, we analyze the characteristics of technology spillovers. We believe that the characteristics of technology spillover can be summarized as the following four points:
1、Externality
2、Interactivity
3. Implicit
4. Uncertainty
