Determinants of the Payment Variability in Foreign Knowledge Acquisition Through Inter-Firm Alliances -An Empirical Study of U.S. Firms-

This paper attempts to analyze factors influencing the choice of the degree of the variability of payments in acquiring knowledge from foreign firms through strategic alliances. Hypotheses regarding such relationships are established and statistically tested over data from a questionnaire survey of U.S. firms. The findings show that the higher degree of the sophistication of the knowledge to be transferred, the higher portion of unregistered knowledge in the total knowledge, and the lower level of the knowledge recipient’s trust in the supplier had a positive effect on the level of the payment variability.