Search Results
Journal Article
Intellectual property protection in a globalizing era
Working Paper
Protecting social interest in free invention
Journal Article
Research spotlight : Fine-tuning
Report
Intellectual property and market size
Intellectual property protection involves a trade-off between the undesirability of monopoly and the desirable encouragement of creation and innovation. As the scale of the market increases, due either to economic and population growth or to the expansion of trade through treaties such as the World Trade Organization, this trade-off changes. We show that, generally speaking, the socially optimal amount of protection decreases as the scale of the market increases. We also provide simple empirical estimates of how much it should decrease.
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 ...
Report
The economics of ideas and intellectual property
Innovation and the adoption of new ideas are fundamental to economic progress. Here we examine the underlying economics of the market for ideas. From a positive perspective, we examine how such markets function with and without government intervention. From a normative perspective, we examine the pitfalls of existing institutions, and how they might be improved. We highlight recent research by ourselves and others challenging the notion that government awards of monopoly through patents and copyright are ?the way? to provide appropriate incentives for innovation.
Report
Rent-seeking and innovation
Innovations and their adoption are the keys to growth and development. Innovations are less socially useful, but more profitable for the innovator, when they are adopted slowly and the innovator remains a monopolist. For this reason, rent-seeking, both public and private, plays an important role in determining the social usefulness of innovations. This paper examines the political economy of intellectual property, analyzing the trade-off between private and public rent-seeking. While it is true in principle that public rent-seeking may be a substitute for private rent-seeking, it is not true ...