Search Results
Working Paper
Cross-border Patenting, Globalization, and Development
We build a stylized model that captures the relationships between cross-border patenting, globalization, and development. Our theory delivers a gravity equation for cross-border patents. To test the model’s predictions, we compile a new dataset that tracks patents within and between countries and industries, for 1980-2019. The econometric analysis reveals a strong, positive impact of policy and globalization on cross-border patent flows, especially from North to South. A counterfactual welfare analysis suggests that the increase in patent flows from North to South has benefited both ...
Working Paper
Cross-border Patenting and the Margins of International Trade
This paper investigates the impact of cross-border patenting on the margins of international trade using disaggregated data on international patenting and trade flows. We develop a theoretical framework of trade and firms' patenting decisions that motivates our empirical analysis. The main results reveal that cross-border patenting has a larger effect on the extensive margin of trade compared to the intensive margin. This finding suggests that firms tend to seek patent protection in international markets prior to entering those markets with new products, rather than with their existing ...
Report
Brand Reallocation and Market Concentration
We study the interaction of customer capital and productivity through brand reallocation across firms. We develop a firm dynamics model with brands as transferable customer capital, heterogeneous firm productivity, and variable markups. We study the matching process between transferable brand capital and core productivity, which can be inefficient with significant welfare implications. We link USPTO trademark data with Nielsen sales data to study the prevalence of brand reallocation and the response of sales and prices to reallocation. Quantitatively, brand reallocation reduces welfare. ...
Working Paper
Cross-border Patenting, Globalization, and Development
We build a quantitative model that captures the relationships between cross-border patenting, globalization, and development. Our theory delivers a ‘structural gravity’ equation for cross-border patents. To test the model’s predictions, we compile a new dataset that tracks patents within and between countries and industries over time. The econometric analysis reveals a strong, positive impact of policy and globalization on cross-border patent flows between 1995 and 2018, especially from North to South. A counterfactual analysis shows these North-to-South flows benefited both regions, ...
Report
The dual nature of trade: measuring its impact on imitation and growth
Imports of goods that embody foreign technology raise a country's output directly as inputs into production and indirectly through reverse-engineering of these goods, which contributes to domestic imitation and innovation. This paper first quantifies spillovers from high-technology imports from developed countries to domestic imitation and innovation in both developed and developing countries. It then considers the contribution of foreign and domestic innovation to real per capita GDP growth. ; International patent data for forty countries from 1970 to 1985 are used to create proxies for ...
Report
What do drug monopolies cost consumers in developing countries?
This paper quantifies the effects of drug monopolies and low per-capita income on pharmaceutical prices in developing economies using the example of the antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) used to treat HIV.
Working Paper
Technology, Geopolitics, and Trade
We study how geopolitical shocks reshape innovation through the contractual structure of cross-border technology adoption. Empirically, royalty flows are more sensitive than goods trade to geopolitical distance, especially where intellectual property enforcement is weak. We build a growth-trade model in which political risk raises breach hazards in licensing contracts. Firms reprice royalties but compliant adoption declines, and innovation incentives respond to the joint evolution of price and quantity. Quantitatively, fragmentation reallocates innovation and lowers the balanced-growth path ...
Working Paper
Implications of Intellectual Property Rights for Dynamic Gains from Trade
A simple intellectual property rights (IPRs) framework is introduced into a dynamic quality ladder model of technological diffusion between innovating firms in one country and imitating firms in another country. The presence of technological spillovers and feedback effects between firms in the two countries demonstrates that, even when steady state growth increases, transition costs sometimes dominate steady state welfare gains. Most existing models of international IPRs find that high intellectual property enforcement in the imitating country leads to welfare gains in the innovating country ...
Working Paper
Technology, Geopolitics, and Trade
We study when unilateral export controls are optimal by quantifying how geopolitical rivalry reshapes trade in ideas. Empirically, cross-border technology flows are far more sensitive than goods trade to geopolitical distance, especially where IPR is weak, and these penalties intensify after 2017. Motivated by this evidence, we build a growth–trade model in which geopolitical distance raises breach risk in licensing; firms partially reprice risk via higher royalties but cannot fully insure quantities. In a consumption-only benchmark, a permanent rise in US–China geopolitical distance ...
Working Paper
Openness and the Optimal Taxation of Foreign Know-How
Developing countries frequently offer tax incentives and even subsidize the entry and operation of foreign firms. I examine the optimality of such policies in an economy where growth is driven by entrepreneurial know-how, a skill that is continuously updated on the basis of the productive ideas implemented in the country. Openness allows foreign ideas to disseminate inside a country and can foster the country's domestic accumulation of know- how. With externalities, however, laissez-faire openness is suboptimal and can be growth-and even welfare-reducing. I examine the gains from openness ...