on measuring the quality of life abstract it is widely recognized that per capita income is not an adequate indicator of aggregate well being it has thus become customary to use a range of socioeconomic indices for assessing the quality of life in a society in this article we extend measures of general well being in current use by including ordinal indices of political and civil liberties and we provide a ranking of the world s poorest countries on the basis of the borda rule we then compare improvements in socioeconomic performance with the availability of political and civil liberties during the decade of the 1970s and observe that improvements in per capita national income life expectancy at birth and infant mortality are positively correlated with the extent of political and civil liberties enjoyed by citizens while improvements in literacy are negatively correlated with these liberties

overcoming the dual liability of foreignness and privateness in international corporate citizenship partnerships responding to increased demands from stakeholder groups many companies have instituted corporate citizenship programs in recent years leveraging their specialized resources to create public goods and services at home and abroad significant suspicion nonetheless remains about the motives and impact of corporations acting in domains traditionally served by government and third sector organizations we argue that such ambivalence undermines the perceived legitimacy of private investments in public goods and that this fundamental liability of privateness lop constitutes a significant obstacle to corporations acting in the public domain through corporate citizenship initiatives for multinational corporations mncs the challenges stemming from the lop are further amplified by the liability of foreignness lof commonly associated with international business operations we discuss the origins of the lop and derive implications of the dual liability of lop and lof for partnering choices in mncs corporate citizenship programs we highlight limitations on the set of credible governance mechanisms available to participants in these partnerships describe a set of alternative governance arrangements that serve to realign incentives among alliance partners and link these to the severity of the lop in a particular setting we illustrate our arguments with a case description of microsoft s partners in learning program

welfare impacts of intellectual property protection in the seed industry we examine the welfare impact of different intellectual property protection ipp regimes in private sector seed research and development r d we take into account the period after expiration of legal ipp and require simultaneous equilibrium in markets for r d seeds and final product optimal ipp is remarkably insensitive to alternative parameterizations except for r d productivity results suggest that optimal ipp is greater than ipp in the u s seed corn market but lower than the ipp that could be attained with genetic use restriction technologies optimal ipp is much higher than ipp achieved under open pollinated crops or where legal ipp is limited

intellectual property rights and developing country agriculture abstract theoretical studies indicate that the welfare of the developing countries might either be improved or damaged by the strengthening of their own intellectual property rights net gains through their agricultural sectors will be positive if the payoff from new innovations is sufficiently different as compared to the technology exporting countries scattered evidence supports the hypotheses that agricultural r d is responsive to iprs in developing countries but there is also evidence that developed country technology is sufficiently appropriate for developing countries as to offer substantial free rider gains however without iprs it seems unlikely that the agricultural productivity rates in developing countries can begin to catch up with those in developed country agriculture

fragmenting global business processes a protection for proprietary information this study shows that when sourcing business services in foreign countries the fragmentation of processes across production units acts as an operational level adjustment variable for firms to adapt their information protection approach to the regulative environment of the host country they have selected and to the possibility to use internal controls over the activities performed abroad we hypothesize that when the above mechanisms are not available firms are more likely to fragment processes across multiple foreign production units instead of collocating all process tasks in the same unit thanks to it enabled integration capabilities firms can exploit the complementarities between the dispersed fragments of a process while reducing the misappropriation hazard of individual fragments empirical results and robustness tests are strongly congruent with these hypotheses we find also that the propensity to turn to the process fragmentation protection mechanism increases with firm host country specific experience and with the alternative value of the proprietary information involved in the activity sourced abroad

foreign direct investment and intellectual property rights evidence from hollywood s global distribution of movies and videos abstract traditional thinking about intellectual property rights ipr suggests that as a country strengthens its ipr standards firms will move their governance structures away from equity based institutions such as foreign direct investment fdi towards more market based relations such as licensing agreements this hypothesis is explored by examining the behavior of hollywood studios in both the feature film and video markets in 40 foreign countries the analysis reveals that the behavior of hollywood studios is more complex than this although moderate iprs are associated with a high degree of licensing both high and low standards of ipr encourage more integrated governance structures

reaping what you sow an empirical analysis of international patent harmonization abstract this paper extends analysis of the gatt uruguay round by quantifying the impact of international patent harmonization as implied by the trips agreement patent harmonization has the capacity to generate large transfers of income between countries the us being the major beneficiary developing countries are major contributors to these transfers but canada the uk and japan also make sizable contributions

encouraging private sector research for tropical agriculture summary agricultural needs in poor tropical countries differ significantly from those in temperate rich countries yet little agricultural research is performed on products for the tropics private research is particularly concentrated in rich countries this is a result of significant failures in the market for research and development r d in particular the difficulty of preventing the resale of seed in developing countries to encourage private r d in tropical agriculture traditional funding of research may be usefully supplemented by a commitment to reward developers of specific new agricultural technologies rewards tied to adoption may be especially useful in increasing up take an illustration of how a commitment to reward developers of new agricultural technologies might work is provided

differences in beliefs and currency risk premiums this paper studies the importance of heterogeneous beliefs for the dynamics of asset prices we focus on currency markets where the absence of short selling constraints allows us to perform sharper tests of theoretical predictions using a unique data set with detailed information on foreign exchange forecasts we construct an empirical proxy for differences in beliefs we show that this proxy has a strong effect on the implied volatility of currency options beyond the volatility of macroeconomic fundamentals we document that differences in beliefs impact also on the shape of the implied volatility smile on the volatility risk premiums and on future currency returns

a cross country index of intellectual property rights in pharmaceutical inventions abstract building on the seminal work of ginarte and park 1997 research policy 26 283 301 we develop an index of property rights in pharmaceutical inventions the pharmaceutical intellectual property protection pipp index for 154 countries spanning 1960 to 2005 it incorporates five types of property rights in pharmaceuticals six statutory measures of enforcement and adherence to three international agreements providing for the grant and enforcement of rights to foreigners for both developed and developed countries the pipp index starts at low levels in 1960 increases slowly through the early 1990s and then sharply increases due to minimum standards set by the 1995 trips agreement

do stronger intellectual property rights promote seed exchange evidence from u s seed exports with increased private investment in crop breeding research in the developed world intellectual property rights have gained importance in seed sector trade related aspects of intellectual property rights trips plus provisions included in recent free trade agreements between the developed and developing countries show a tendency of the developed world to impose their high standards for protection of plant intellectual property on the developing world while stronger intellectual property rights can increase international exchange in seed market power effect can lead to a reduction in exports of seed to foreign markets this article estimates the impact of intellectual property rights on u s seed exports the estimation is performed at a crop level using heckman selection model the results reveal that the impact of intellectual property rights varies across different types of crops open pollinated genetically modified and hybrid crops while trips provisions are important to facilitate transfer of genetically modified crops they play a minor role for open pollinated and hybrid crops the results also show that plant breeders rights envisioned by the upov system can be important to promote seed exchange when proper mechanisms are put in place to enforce these rights

optimal transmission planning under the mexican new electricity market abstract this paper addresses electricity transmission planning under the new industry and institutional structure of the mexican electricity market which has engaged in a deep reform process after decades of a state owned vertically integrated non competitive closed industry under this new structure characterized by a nodal pricing system and an independent system operator iso we analyze welfare optimal network expansion with two modeling strategies in a first model we propose the use of an incentive price cap mechanism to promote the expansion of mexican networks in a second model we study centrally planned grid expansion in mexico by an iso within a power flow model we carry out comparisons of these models which provide us with hints to evaluate the actual transmission planning process proposed by mexican authorities prodesen we obtain that the prodesen plan appears to be a convergent welfare optimal planning process

the effects of the us plant variety protection act on wheat genetic improvement in our model of partially appropriable invention if the us plant variety protection act pvpa of 1970 succeeded in strengthening intellectual property protection for plant breeders it should have led to increases in investment in varietal r d improved varietal quality and enhanced royalties these hypotheses are tested using data on us wheat we find that the pvpa may have stimulated public but not private sector investment in wheat varietal improvement but that the pvpa did not cause any increase in experimental or commercial wheat yields these findings indicate that the pvpa had little impact on excludability or appropriability in wheat varieties

the composition of foreign direct investment and protection of intellectual property rights evidence from transition economies while existing literature has examined the impact of intellectual property protection on the volume of foreign direct investment fdi little is known about its effect on the composition of fdi inflows the author addresses this question empirically using a unique firm level data set from eastern europe and the former soviet union she finds that weak protection deters foreign investors in technology intensive sectors that rely heavily on intellectual property rights the results also indicate that a weak intellectual property regime encourages investors to undertake projects focusing on distribution rather than local production the latter effect is present in all sectors not just those relying heavily on intellectual property protection

determinants of patent rights a cross national study abstract this paper presents an index of patent rights for 110 countries for the period 1960 1990 the index is used to examine what factors or characteristics of economies determine how strongly patent rights will be protected the evidence does indicate that more developed economies tend to provide stronger protection but the underlying factors which influence patent protection levels are the country s level of research and development r d activity market environment and international integration which are correlated with its level of development the results qualify however that r d activity influences patent protection levels after a nation s research sector reaches a critical size an implication of this is that to raise patent protection levels in weakly protecting countries it is important to foster a significant research base in those countries and thereby create incentives for protecting patent rights

is trade in electrical and electronic products sensitive to ipr protection evidence from china s exports abstractthis article attempts to provide the first empirical evidence on the effect of intellectual property rights iprs on china s export of electrical and electronic products it adopts a gravity model for unbalanced panel data of china s 146 important trading partners over the period of 2002 2012 to eliminate the effects of fdi in determining the linkage between ipr and exports the panel excludes the destination countries and territories that invest in china the results reveal that the level of ipr protection in destination countries has a positive impact on china s flow of exports further analysis on data disaggregated by ipr score demonstrates that a higher level of ipr protection in destination countries and territories is positively linked with china s exports of these items in each of the ipr protection clusters and indicates a strong market power effect by the interplay between r d expenditure and ipr in the destinations finally both market power and market expansion effects are found to

intellectual property protection in plant varieties a worldwide index 1961 2011 in this paper we construct a new index measuring the strength of intellectual property ip protection for plant varieties in 69 countries over the period 1961 2011 we examine the statistical properties of the index and compare it with other indicators of ip protection we conclude that the index provides a reasonable synthetic assessment of the relative strength of ip protection in plant varieties across countries in addition we study the main determinants of the evolution of the index and examine the patterns of correlation between the index and agricultural production

the contribution of genetic modification to changes in corn yield in the united states we use a large rich dataset compiled from results of university extension trials to estimate the contribution of genetic modification gm to changes in corn yield in the united states from timea to timeb through repeated experimental trials we obtain consistent estimates of the effect of these traits by using both the hausman taylor estimator and a comparison of fixed effects estimates analogous to the agronomic practice of comparing near isolines our results suggest that gm traits had a positive impact on yield but that gains associated with combining several gm traits in one hybrid are not necessarily additive

licensee technological potential and exclusive rights in international licensing a multilevel model granting of exclusive rights is an important consideration for firms using licensing as a mode of entry into foreign markets as exclusive contracts reduce licensors flexibility in a given market during the term of the agreement by granting exclusivity to a licensee with greater technological potential the exchange partners can increase the potential transactional value of the licensing agreement at the same time a licensee with strong technological potential will increase the threat of transactional hazards due to underinvestment and rent appropriation in this paper we develop and empirically test a model that evaluates the balancing of transactional value and transaction costs in exclusive licensing in particular we identify the conditions under which exclusive contracts are likely to be granted to foreign licensees with strong technological potential empirical results from a multilevel model based on 375 international licensing agreements of us firms in high technology industries during 1995 2008 show that licensees with a stronger technological potential are more likely to be granted exclusive rights in countries with strong intellectual property rights protection and in industries with a high rate of technological change but are less likely to be granted exclusive rights when there is a high degree of overlap between licensor and licensee products

finance and trade a cross country empirical analysis on the impact of financial development and asset tangibility on international trade summary this paper investigates the interplay between financial development asset tangibility and international trade using industry level data on firms dependence on external finance and firms asset tangibility for 27 industries in 42 countries we find that economies with higher levels of financial development have higher export shares and trade balance in industries with more intangible assets using the same dataset we also show that the interplay between property rights protection and asset tangibility influences the pattern of trade higher levels of property rights protection lead to higher export shares and trade balance in industries with more intangible assets

does stronger patent protection increase export variety evidence from us product level data proponents of global intellectual property rights iprs reforms have argued that developing countries weak iprs limit their access to foreign innovative products and technologies central to our understanding of the effects of iprs on product access is the influence of national differences in patent protection on corporate behavior and business strategy of multinational firms using detailed product data on us exports from 1990 to 2000 this research note assesses the impact of strengthening iprs in developing countries on product variety of us exports colonial origin and cross industry variation in patent effectiveness serve to identify the impact the results show that the strengthening of iprs increased exports of new products in patent sensitive industries the expansion in product variety accounted for the entire increase in us exports the findings substantiate claims that ratification of trips by developing countries promotes access to new foreign products and technologies additionally the results demonstrate that patent protection is a significant institutional factor in us firms business decisions over the introduction of new products and processes into a developing country marketplace

why do southern countries have little incentive to protect northern intellectual property rights instead of focusing on the conflict of interests between north and south the author studies the conflict of interests among southern countries and provides an alternative answer to the question why do southern countries have little incentive to protect northern intellectual property rights owing to the incentive of each southern country to free ride on other southern countries with respect to providing protection the overall protection they provide is not sufficient therefore a new source of mutual gains exists among southern countries and also between north and south a joint effort of southern countries is required to exploit these gains

intellectual property rights foreign direct investment and industrial development this paper develops a north south product cycle model in which innovation imitation and the ow of fdi are all endogenously determined in the model a strengthening of ipr protection in the south reduces the rate of imitation and it increases the ow of fdi indeed

the impact of patent protection on us pharmaceutical exports to developing countries this article provides evidence that patent protection can have a positive effect on trade by analysing the impact of the implementation of intellectual property rights ipr in developing countries on the us exports of pharmaceutical products following intense lobbying efforts from the us pharmaceutical industry to have the trade related aspects of intellectual property rights trips agreement included in the creation of the world trade organization wto a gravity model using panel data from 1995 to 2010 suggests that the implementation of minimum standards of patent protection has increased us exports of pharmaceuticals to 108 nonadvanced countries

patents and the global diffusion of new drugs analysis of the timing of launches of 642 new drugs in 76 countries during 1983 2002 shows that patent and price regulation regimes strongly affect how quickly new drugs become commercially available in different countries price regulation delays launch while longer and more extensive patent rights accelerate it health policy institutions and economic and demographic factors that make markets more profitable also speed up diffusion the estimated effects are generally robust to controlling for endogeneity of policy regimes with country fixed effects and instrumental variables the results highlight the important role of policy choices in driving the diffusion of new innovations

an incentive mechanism for electricity transmission expansion in mexico abstract this study proposes an incentive regulatory framework for expanding electricity transmission in mexico a two part pricing model is implemented within a combined merchant regulatory structure three cases are considered in the first a monopolist with postage stamp tariffs serves the whole country using uniform prices in the second case one firm holds a regional monopoly in each of the five electricity areas in the third a monopolist operates in all areas of the national electricity system and discriminates in the prices it charges in each of the regions this approach is described and then applied to the mexican electricity transmission network using real data the study compares all three cases in terms of profits capacity increases and network expansion the results are found to depend on two effects the economies of scale effect in which the maximum level is reached with a single network and the discriminatory effect that results when a firm can discriminate among types of consumers the economies of scale effect produces greater capacity and network expansion whereas the discriminatory effect increases profits

plant variety protection in developing countries a report from the field the establishment of intellectual property rights iprs for plant varieties has caused considerable controversy but there is relatively little empirical evidence on performance and options in developing countries this paper summarizes the results of a recent five country study concentrating on the conduct of plant variety protection pvp regimes it examines pvp in the context of other mechanisms that provide incentives for plant breeding it discusses the principal options available to developing countries and examines the ability of pvp to offer protection from competing firms and from on farm seed saving it also looks at the administrative and management requirements of pvp regimes although the paper does not discuss patent protection for biotechnology it examines the ipr requirements for the introduction of transgenic varieties developing countries need to establish an appropriate pvp system but pvp should be seen as part of a broader strategy for seed system development

incentive to reduce crop trait durability to reduce the competition from farmers who self produce seed an inbred line seed producer can switch to nondurable hybrid seed in a two period model we investigate the impact of crop durability on self production pricing and switching decisions and we examine the impact of license fees paid by self producing farmers first in an inbred line seed monopoly model we find that the monopolist may produce technologically dominated hybrid seed in order to extract more surplus from farmers further the introduction of license fees improves efficiency second we study how the monopolist s behavior is affected by the entry of a nondurable hybrid seed producer we show that the inbred line seed producer might benefit from competing with a technologically dominated hybrid seed producer as this allows for consumers discrimination

an analysis of selectivity in the productivity evaluation of biotechnology an application to corn we investigate selectivity bias in the evaluation of biotech hybrid productivity the analysis is applied to experimental data on wisconsin corn yields from 1990 to 2010 relying on a heckman like factor that accounts for selectivity we find evidence of selection bias indicating that some of the observed yield advantage associated with gm hybrids can be attributed to their conventional genes we document how the rising market concentration of biotech firms has contributed to increasing selectivity bias in corn yield the impact however is offset by the negative effect of the rising adoption rate of gm corn on selectivity bias copyright 2013 oxford university press

how much should society fuel the greed of innovators on the relations between appropriability opportunities and rates of innovation the paper attempts a critical assessment of both the theory and the empirical evidence on the role of appropriability and in particular of intellectual property rights iprs as incentives for technological innovation we start with a critical discussion of the standard justification of the attribution of ipr in terms of market failures in knowledge generation such an approach we argue misses important features of technological knowledge and also neglects the importance of non market institutions in the innovation process next we examine the recent changes in the ipr regimes and their influence upon both rates of patenting and underlying rates of innovation the evidence broadly suggests that first iprs are not the most important device apt to profit from innovation and second they have at best no impact or possibly even a negative impact on the underlying rates of innovation rather we argue technology and industry specific patterns of innovation are primarily driven by the opportunities associated with each technological paradigm conversely firm specific abilities to seize them and profit from innovation depend partly on adequacy of the strategic combinations identified by the taxonomy of teece d 1986 profiting from technological innovation implications for integration collaboration licensing and public policy research policy 15 285 305 and partly on idiosyncratic capabilities embodied in the various firms

intellectual property rights in mexico do they play a role summary there is little empirical evidence concerning the effects of intellectual property rights ipr in technologically advanced developing countries complete enumeration of the mexican maize breeding industry showed that contrary to the hypothesis that ipr would support innovation ipr play no role in the industry ipr theory should be revised to include characteristics of developing countries critical for the good functioning of ipr quality of the institutional environment and importance of transaction given the relatively good score of mexico on these critical aspects ipr are likely to play an even smaller role in other developing countries

trips trade and growth a two country model of endogenous growth is employed to assess the importance of intellectual property rights to trade growth and technology transfer the paper provides theoretical results linking the intellectual property rights regime to trade patterns aggregate r d worldwide growth and aggregate welfare measures failure to provide patent protection for foreign made innovations forces innovators to employ less than the best practice research technologies reduces aggregate r d activities worldwide effectively eliminates technology transfer across countries and reduces worldwide growth copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

welfare effects of global patent protection this paper uses a simple model of invention and patent protection to examine the welfare effects of extending patent protection from the country where invention takes place to another country that is only a consumer of invented products it is shown that while the welfare of the inventing country certainly rises with the extension of patent protection that of the other country probably falls and may well fall by more than the increase in welfare of the inventing country in particular as patent protection is extended to a larger and larger portion of the world the effect on the welfare of the world as a whole of extending it to the rest of the world becomes negative

international robust disagreement the literature on disagreement documents that exogenous heterogenous beliefs can explain several key features of both domestic and international asset prices among others anderson ghysels and juergens 2005 and beber breedon and buraschi 2010 we show that concerns about model misspecification paired with consumption home bias can generate persistent endogenous disagreement across countries even when i they share the same approximating model ii endowments are i i d and markets are complete and frictionless when agents fear model misspecification hansen and sargent 2007 they slant probabilities toward worst case outcomes and base their economic choices on their distorted subjective probabilities in our two country two good economy consumption home bias generates endogenous disagreement in about the worst case scenario since each country fears a low supply of its most preferred good disagreement on the worst case scenario generates different distorted expectations about the growth rates of the local endowments even in the case in which all goods share the same objective probability distribution according to recent findings in the literature on risk sharing with heterogenous consumers and recursive preferences anderson 2005 colacito and croce 2011 borovicka 2011 our economy features permanent disagreement with a well defined ergodic distribution of beliefs

do stronger intellectual property rights induce more agricultural trade a dynamic panel data model applied to seed trade do stronger intellectual property rights iprs induce more agricultural trade based on panel data for 60 countries during 1990 2000 and using a dynamic panel data model this article assesses whether and how national differences in iprs affect the trade flow of planting seeds imports from the united states the empirical results show that whether or not a country adheres to iprs agreements has no discernible impact on planting seeds that are imported from the united states implying that the strengthening of iprs seems not to induce more agricultural trade this result sheds some light on the debate in the theoretical literature on the importance of iprs and trade

international patent protection 1960 2005 abstract this note provides an update to the index of patent protection published in this journal in 1997 the original paper presented the index for 1960 1990 for 110 countries the index has now been updated to 2005 and extended to 122 countries the adoption of stronger patent laws and the composition of patent rights vary across countries by level of economic development

welfare impacts of cross country spillovers in agricultural research the welfare implications of intellectual property protection ipp for private sector agricultural research are analyzed focusing on the realistic cases where countries provide different ipp levels technology spills over across countries and the public sector is involved in research a model is developed to determine who benefits from and who should pay for the associated research the article contains some interesting results on the implications of a harmonization of ipp policies through multilateral agreements or via technology that allows research firms to prevent the copying of plants and animals that express traits that have emerged from their research

institutional regime shift in intellectual property rights and innovation strategies of firms in china this study develops a novel conceptual framework to understand the differential impact of formal institutional regime shift in intellectual property rights on the innovation and patenting strategies of chinese and western firms operating in china we argue that to the extent that chinese firms have been deeply embedded in china s informal institutions they are less responsive to formal institutional changes than western firms operating in china using the major china patent law reform of 2001 as an exogenous event we find results consistent with our key arguments with the strengthening of the previously weak utility model patent protection chinese firms are less likely to apply for such patents to safeguard their innovations than western firms however this difference becomes less pronounced in regions with higher quality intellectual property rights and legal institutions that foster research and development and innovation and when western firms gain longer operational experience in china this s

infringement of intellectual property rights causes and consequences parallel revolutions in molecular biology and the legal framework that assigns intellectual property rights iprs to plant genetic resources have resultedin the emergence of agricultural biotechnology andthe introd uction of genetically modified gm products into the foodsystem iprs create economic incentives for research andd evelopment by making the innovator the residual claimant of the benefits associatedwith the new technology whereas iprs purport to protect intellectual property full appropriation of the benefits from the innovation is not a given when infringement of iprs i e piracy is profitable rational economic agents compliance with ipr provisions is by no means assured costly monitoring and enforcement are requiredto d eter unauthorized illegal use of the new technology experience from various countries aroundthe worldind icates that ipr enforcement is far from being perfect andmany successful innovations are

international diffusion and intellectual property rights an empirical analysis abstract does a stronger intellectual property rights regime lead to the faster diffusion of new products and technology while there is a presumption that this is the case our analysis of data on the international release patterns of hollywood movies suggests a more complex story although moderate standards of ipr encourage the spread of movies either very weak or very strong property rights tend to slow the speed with which american movies are released abroad this empirical finding is robust to a wide variety of specifications overall it appears that while some recognition of ipr may encourage diffusion very strong ipr may actually retard the speed of diffusion

what is behind the recent surge in patenting abstract we investigate the cause of an unprecedented surge of us patenting over the past decade conventional wisdom points to the establishment of the court of appeals of the federal circuit by congress in 1982 we examine whether this institutional change which has benefited patent holders explains the burst in us patenting using both international and domestic data on patent applications and awards we conclude that the evidence is not favorable to the conventional view instead it appears that the jump in patenting reflects an increase in us innovation spurred by changes in the management of research

when an importer s protection of ipr interacts with an exporter s level of technology comparing the impacts on the exports of the north and south using bilateral trade data of countries from 2000 to 2007 this paper contributes to the empirical literature on the role of intellectual property rights iprs in global trade the existing literature has focused on how iprs in the destination country affect exports from a source country in this paper we add an additional dimension the level of technology of the exporting country lt this is quite important for distinguishing the impact of iprs on the exports of developed and developing countries since the technology levels vary across countries at different stages of development and intellectual property rights better protect exports that are technologically advanced than exports that are imitative and potentially infringing by factoring in the level of technology lt our empirical analysis makes the case that iprs can act as a barrier to the exports from the south especially the rapidly catching up economies and thus be a source for the middle income trap phenomenon

marginal pricing of transmission services an analysis of cost recovery this paper presents an in depth analysis of network revenues computed with marginal pricing and in particular it investigates the reasons why marginal prices fail to recover the total incurred network costs in actual power systems the basic theoretical results are presented and the major causes of the mismatch between network costs and marginal revenues are identified and illustrated with numerical examples some tutorial and others of realistic size the regulatory implications of marginal network pricing in the context of competitive electricity markets are analyzed and suggestions are provided for the meaningful allocation of the costs of the network among its users

intellectual property rights and the mode of technology transfer abstract transferring technology in an environment where patent protection is uncertain can pose significant risks to an innovating firm s ability to appropriate rents this paper incorporates asymmetric information in a screening game where the innovating firm has the choices of licensing a new product at arm s length to a foreign firm exporting it or licensing it to a subsidiary subsidiary production avoids the risk of imitation but involves higher costs for the innovating firm the gains to the southern country from the lack of intellectual property right protection may be offset by strategic behavior by northern firms who opt for technology transfer via subsidiary or monopoly production

productivity growth in world agriculture sources and constraints during the last half century advances in crop production came from expansion in areas irrigated from more intensive application of fertilizers and crop protection chemicals and from crop varieties that were more responsive to technical inputs and management advances in animal production came from genetic improvements and advances in animal nutrition differences among developed and developing countries in output per hectare and per worker have widened if these gaps are to be narrowed agricultural research capacity in developing countries will have to be substantially strengthened

the effect of intellectual property rights on agricultural productivity this article explores how the strengthening of intellectual property ip protection affects agricultural productivity in a panel of countries for the period 1961 2011 using an index of ip protection for plant varieties we study the effect of stronger intellectual property rights iprs on cereal yields and two different types of cereals open pollinated wheat and hybrid maize we found that the strengthening of iprs has a positive effect on productivity of cereals for high and low income countries however we found no significant effect for middle income countries in addition we found that becoming a member of the trade related aspects of intellectual property rights negatively affects cereal yields finally we found evidence of the existence of nonlinearities in the effect of iprs on agricultural yields which confirms a threshold effect of iprs that also varies for countries of different income level the findings support the hypothesis that country specificities are important in determining the effect of iprs and imply that there is no unique system that fits all

economic growth lessons from two centuries of american agriculture this paper reviews the growth experience of u s agriculture over the past two centuries in consonance with the view that growth is determined by the economic environment which consists of the available technology incentives constraints and institutions within this framework the implemented technology is determined jointly with the resource allocation the review covers the role played by resource endowment resource flow technical change and its factor bias and product demand it highlights the importance of the income elasticity of demand and the labor augmentation of the technical change the total factor productivity tfp was almost nil at the beginning of the nineteenth century increasing gradually to the point where it exhausted output growth in the latter part of the twentieth century this pattern is consistent with the postulate emerging from this framework where the tfp is endogenous and determined jointly with growth rather than determining it the more recent performance of u s agriculture is placed within a global perspective in order to generalize the discussion

are weak patent rights a barrier to u s exports abstract this paper assesses whether how and to what extent u s exports are sensitive to national differences in patent rights i estimate bilateral trade equations that account for trade distortions related to patent rights using data on state to country manufacturing exports in 1992 i find that weak patent rights are a barrier to u s exports but only to countries that pose a strong threat of imitation e g china the stronger patent rights required under the wto agreement increase u s exports to these high threat markets alternatively strengthening patent rights in countries that pose a weak threat of imitation reinforces monopoly power and reduces u s exports to these markets

patent rights and innovative activity evidence from national and firm level data global standards of patent protection have been strengthened and harmonized in recent years despite the heated policy debates and theoretical controversies empirical studies of the consequences for innovative activity are scant this paper contributes to the debate by providing an empirical analysis of the effects of patent strength on different aspects of innovative activity namely firm level research and development r d domestic patenting and foreign patenting the analysis employs an updated index of patent rights the results show the complexity of evaluating the effects of patent reform on innovative activity since the effects vary nonlinearly depending on the initial level of patent strength and vary by a country s level of economic development overall for developing economies patent strength negatively affects domestic patent filings and insignificantly affects r d and foreign patent filings for developed economies patent strength positively affects r d and domestic patent filings and negatively affects foreign patent filings after some critical level of patent protection is reached journal of international business studies 2007 38 878 900 doi 10 1057 palgrave jibs 8400306

an option perspective on generating and maintaining plant variety rights in china notwithstanding the ambiguous research and productivity promoting effects of plant variety protections pvps even in developed countries many developing countries have adopted pvps in the past few years in part to comply with their trade related aspects of intellectual property rights trips obligations seeking and maintaining pvps reserves options to an expected revenue stream from the future sale of protected varieties the value of which varies for a host of reasons in this article we empirically examine the pattern of pvp applications in china since its pvp laws were first introduced in 1997 we place those pvp rights in the context of china s present and likely future seed markets to identify the economic incentives and institutional influences on decisions to develop and apply for varietal rights

intellectual property rights and the world trade organization retrospect and prospects this paper analyzes the main economic issues of intellectual property rights iprs protection in the context of the world trade organization wto a retrospective view on the establishment of the trips trade related aspects of intellectual property rights agreement a still controversial accomplishment of the uruguay round of trade liberalization is provided the paper reviews the economic rationale for the harmonization of iprs drawing both on economic theory considerations as well as emerging empirical evidence the logic of linking ipr protection and trade in the context of the wto is also re examined some specific attention is devoted to the implications of trips for agricultural and biotechnology innovations the impact that ipr protection can have in promoting growth and development and the relation of iprs with other economic policies is discussed the paper concludes with an analysis of the prospects for more or less iprs related consensus in the current round of wto negotiations

the heterogeneous effects of a food price crisis on child school enrollment and labor evidence from pakistan using a panel survey this paper investigates how the increase in food prices in pakistan in 2008 2010 affected children s school enrollment and labor the causal identification relies on geographical variations in the price of food wheat the results show that the negative impacts of food price increase on school enrollment differ by gender economic status and the presence of siblings the negative effects on school do not directly correspond to the increase in child labor because the transition from being idle to labor activity or from school to being idle are significant particularly among the poor girls the results also show that children in households with access to agricultural land are not affected by higher food prices the analyses reveal a more dynamic picture of the impact of food price increase on child status and contribute to broader policy discussion to mitigate the impact of crises on children s education

private sector incentives and the diffusion of agricultural technology evidence from developing countries abstractthe role of intellectual property rights iprs has been extensively debated in the literature on technology transfers and agricultural productivity growth in developing countries however few studies offer cross country evidence on how iprs affect yield growth by incentivising private sector investment in cultivar improvement we address this knowledge gap by testing technology diffusion patterns for six major crops using a unique dataset for the period 1961 2010 and an arellano bond linear dynamic panel data estimation approach findings indicate that biological and legal forms of iprs promote yield gap convergence between developed and developing countries although effects vary by crop

regulation competition and liberalization in many countries throughout the world regulators are struggling to determine whether and how to introduce competition into regulated industries this essay examines the complexities involved in the liberalization process while stressing the importance of case specific analyses this essay distinguishes liberalization policies that generally are procompetitive from corresponding anticompetitive liberalization policies

how trade related are intellectual property rights abstract there is little empirical evidence about whether differing international levels of patent protection influence trade flows if a nation strengthens its patent laws it could experience higher or lower imports we specify an empirical model in which deviations of bilateral sectoral imports from anticipated levels are related to income trade barriers and patent laws patent regulations in the importing country are corrected for endogeneity through the use of instrumental variables the results of the final equations indicate that increasing patent protection has a positive impact on bilateral manufacturing imports into both small and large developing economies

the dynamics of risk sensitive allocations abstract this paper describes pareto optimal allocations when agents have risk sensitive preferences as formulated by hansen and sargent ieee trans automat control 40 5 1995 968 971 necessary and sufficient conditions are given for the existence and stability of steady states at which pareto weights are time invariant when all agents are risk sensitive with the same power reward function there is a unique interior steady state which is stable when the power is positive and unstable when the power is negative when there is at least one agent with time additive preferences eventually all risk sensitive agents have zero pareto weights

the political economy of international trade enduring puzzles and an agenda for inquiry a similar set of concepts has been central to the literatures on the formation of trade policy coalitions and the new economics of institutions the political and economic consequences of the degree to which assets are specific to a particular economic activity in this survey the authors take the necessary first step of summarizing the main findings of these two literatures and then suggest ways in which the issue might be joined in addition to providing a more coherent understanding of the findings of these two literatures and some new directions for them the authors show that many puzzles remain in the field of trade politics puzzles for which there are no appealing answers or where there are answers no strong evidence in support of them this essay then in addition to being a theoretical review of the literature puts forward an agenda for future study of international trade politics

diffusion of knowledge based products applications to developing economies demand for a knowledge based product often must be created by the product s innovator but the process which diffuses knowledge and so enhances demand accelerates decay of the company s ability to appropriate benefits generated both by the product and by the company s complementary explanation of its qualities and uses decay of the ability to appropriate profit arises from a pervasive free rider problem rivals as well as users become educated by the innovator as the market deepens and expands entry will become feasible for firms capable of production but incapable of supplying effective educational packages at least two principal themes emerge i logically innovative products will be sold bundled with education and other complementary services at least in their early stages ii intensity of diffusion will be sensitive to the nature of governing property rights regimes the analysis suggests that because of free rider and other problems an innovator often finds initial product development plans unproductive and must resort to alternatives feasible diffusion often requires that the product space allocated to an innovator by grants of property rights be larger contain more dimensions than one confined to primary invention s

do stronger patent rights raise high tech exports to the developing world abstract despite over 20 years of debate the trips agreement remains very contentious this paper evaluates the impact of strengthening patent rights prs in developing countries on developed countries exports over the 1962 2000 period colonial origin is used to isolate exogenous variation in prs the impact is then identified by examining the cross industry difference in sensitivity to prs i find that the increase in prs made in response to the trips agreement added about 35 billion 2000 us dollars to the value of developed countries patent sensitive exports into 18 developing countries this amount is equivalent to an 8 6 increase in these developing countries annual value of patent sensitive imports the increase in the value of exports was driven by a quantity rather than a price increase

assessing the implications of intellectual property rights on plant and animal agriculture many readers over their careers will have shared my experience of initiating some really innovative work only to learn that it had been done and done better thirty years earlier that is one key attraction of research on intellectual property rights iprs for plants and animals they are in the main very recent so whatever one does cannot have a direct antecedent indeed to date little economic research has been completed on the implications of expanding ipr protection for living agricultural inputs protection in the united states for asexually propagated plants has been available since 1930 1990 in canada for sexually propagated plants for over twenty five years and for patented plants for a dozen years see below however only in the last year has significant acreage of patented bioengineered plants some 2 5 million in total been planted with higher levels going in the ground in the united states and canada as this paper is being drafted those crops are primarily herbicide resistant beans canola and corn bt producing corn cotton and potatoes and virus resistant squash james and krattiger only one livestock application to my knowledge has been patented a pig in australia with a controllable growth hormone but as yet it is not a commercial product what has been explored extensively in the literature are expressed concerns about iprs on farm structure ethics university industry relationships information exchange and related matters see e g kloppenburg nor is the debate limited to the united states or developed countries the international enhancement of

intellectual property rights environmental regulations and foreign direct investment sustainable development has been a popular buzzword among policymakers and economists for over a decade although a key tenet of maintaining a sustainable development path for many economies rests on attracting mobile capital theoretical and empirical evidence into the institutional policies that attract factors remains largely unresolved this paper takes a positive look at the determinants of attracting capital with particular attention paid to intellectual property rights and environmental regulations

indicators of the relative importance of iprs in developing countries this paper reviews briefly the economic case for uniform and strong intellectual property rights iprs in developing countries and to throw some empirical light on the potential impact of strengthening iprs and applying them uniformly to all countries as envisaged by the trade related aspects of intellectual property rights trips agreement it argues that countries at different levels of industrial and technological development face very different economic costs and benefits from stronger iprs it illustrates technological differences with the help of country classifications using various measures of domestic innovation and technology imports both of which are expected to respond to stricter iprs the data can be used to examine the technological implications of stricter iprs the paper does not however deal with such ipr issues as the cost of medicines agricultural inputs bio diversity or genetic materials nor does it try to measure the strength of ipr regimes in different countries or quantify the general impact of iprs on development

transmission investment in the peruvian electricity market theory and applications abstract this research presents an application of the mechanism in hogan et al 2010 hrv to promote electricity transmission network expansion in the peruvian electricity transmission system known as sein sistema electrico interconectado nacional the hrv mechanism combines the merchant and regulatory approaches to promote investment into transmission grids this mechanism gives incentives for efficient investment in expansion of the network by rebalancing over time the fixed and variable charges of a two part tariff in the framework of a wholesale electricity market with locational pricing the expansion of the network is carried out through the sale of financial transmission rights ftrs for the congested lines the mechanism is applied for 103 nodes of the sein using detailed characteristics of generators nodes and transmission lines under laspeyres weights and linear cost of expansion of transmission capacity it is shown that prices converge to lower price levels as a result of increased transmission capacity

financial integration productivity and capital accumulation understanding the mechanism through which nancial globalization aects eco nomic performance is crucial for evaluating the costs and bene ts of opening nancial markets this paper is a rst attempt at disentangling the eects of nancial inte gration on the two main determinants of economic performance productivity tfp and investment i provide empirical evidence from a sample of 70 countries observed between 1975 and 1999 the results for both de jure and de facto indicators suggest that nancial integration has a positive direct eect on productivity while it does not directly aect capital accumulation i also control for indirect eects of nancial globalization through nancial development and banking and currency crises while nancial integration does not systematically increase domestic nancial depth it may raise the likelyhood of banking crises though only to a minor extent yet the overall eect of nancial liberalization remains positive for productivity and negligible for investment

intellectual property rights product complexity and the organization of multinational firms this paper studies how the intellectual property right ipr regime in destination countries influences the way multinationals structure the international organization of their production in particular we explore how multinationals divide tasks of dierent complexities across countries with dierent levels of ipr protection the analysis studies the decision of firms between procurement from related parties and outsourcing to independents suppliers at the product level it also breaks down outsourcing into two types by distinguishing whether or not they involve technology sharing between the two parties we combine data from a french firm level survey on the mode choice for each transaction with a newly developed complexity measure at the product level our results confirm that firms are generally reluctant to source highly complex goods from outside firm boundaries by studying the interaction between product complexity and the ipr protection we obtain that i for technology sharing outsourcing iprs promote outsourcing of more complex goods to a destination country by guaranteeing the protection of their technology ii for non technology related outsourcing iprs attract the outsourcing of less complex products that are more prone to reverse engineering and simpler to decodify and imitate

robust control informational frictions and international consumption correlations abstract in this paper we examine the effects of model misspecification robustness or rb on international consumption correlations in an otherwise standard small open economy model with endogenous capital accumulation we show that in the presence of capital mobility in financial markets rb lowers the international consumption correlations by generating heterogeneous responses of consumption to productivity shocks across countries facing different macroeconomic uncertainty in addition we show that rb can also improve the model s predictions in three other moments of consumption dynamics the relative volatility of consumption to income the persistence of consumption and the correlation between consumption and output after calibrating the rb parameter using the detection error probabilities we show that the model can explain the observed international consumption correlations as well as the other consumption moments quantitatively finally we show that the main conclusions of our benchmark model do not change in an extension in which the agent cannot observe the state perfectly due to finite information processing capacity