A Reply to Campbell and Mau

In Bloom et al. (2016, Bloom, Draca and Van Reenen (BDVR)), we have a set of nine results on the impact of Chinese trade. The first three showed that Chinese trade increased technical change in European firms measured by patents, productivity, and the adoption of Information Technology (IT). The last six showed that Chinese trade led to reallocation towards more technologically advanced firms: those with more patents, higher productivity and IT adoption had faster growth and lower exit rates. Campbell and Mau (2020, "CM") argue that one of these results, the effect of Chinese imports on patenting, is sensitive to specification changes. This article focuses on CM's critique of our count data models—we discuss other aspects of CM in a longer response.1