strategic trade policy intellectual property rights protection and north south trade abstract in this paper we analyze the issue of optimal tariffs when the northern and southern firms compete in quantities in an imperfectly competitive northern market and there are potentially varying degrees of intellectual property rights ipr violation by the south ipr violation is reflected through the leakage of technological knowledge spillovers from the northern to the southern firm creating unit cost reduction it is shown that optimal tariffs in this framework are always higher than in the simple duopoly model since they serve here not only as profit shifting devices but also as instruments that influence domestic innovative activity generate scale economies and countervail the ipr violation of the south the other notable difference from the standard duopoly model is that positive tariffs may be desirable from the world welfare point of view

gendered occupational differences and earnings gaps in globalising urban economies the case of tel aviv the major theoretical purpose of the paper is to investigate the implications of globalising and restructuring urban economies on gender related differences in occupational distribution and earnings within the urban context the study uses data from national censuses 1983 and 1995 and a labour force survey of 2001 in israel to investigate the evolution of gender gaps in tel aviv the findings that point to the erosion of advantages in the globalising and restructuring urban economy compared with the nation as a whole may indicate new potential sources of gender inequality the theoretical implications for both the restructuring and globalisation theses and the study of sources of inequality among men and women are discussed

non homothetic preferences and iprs protection abstract there are two opposite views regarding whether stronger protection of intellectual property rights iprs will benefit or hurt the south we provide a unification using a model of directed innovations with identical but non homothetic preferences for the south a major benefit of protecting iprs is incentivizing innovations that better address its needs the directed innovation benefit and a major cost is yielding monopoly rents to innovators the monopoly rent cost when preferences are non homothetic the directed innovation benefit decreases in south s income because consumption baskets of the south become more similar to those of the north while the monopoly rent cost increases in the south s income because higher income admits greater monopoly markups the combined effect implies that the costs of iprs protection tend to outweigh the benefits for mid income countries while the opposite is true for low income ones we discuss the policy implications of this observation

general economic conditions and national elections the fact that economic conditions influence voters is a leading commonplace of conversation in election years the question is is this fact in fact a fact despite the overwhelming popularity of the fact it has received neither an explicit theoretical analysis presumably because it is so obvious that economic adversity should create political adversaries nor until recently a satisfactory statistical analysis gerald h kramer has presented a multivariate analysis of congressional elections which would strongly suggest that fluctuations in the rate of unemployment have no appreciable effect upon elections but that fluctuations in per capita real income are influential in the following pages i propose to 1 reaffirm his finding on the electoral unimportance of ordinary fluctuations in unemployment 2 argue that contrary to kramer fluctuations in real income also do not have important electoral effects and 3 present an argument based upon rational voter behavior for the unimportance of general economic conditions in national elections

imitation and innovation driven development under imperfect intellectual property rights abstract developing countries employ about two fifth of the world s researchers originate one quarter of world expenditures on r d and their inventions are subject to imitation nevertheless the previous literature focuses on north south setups in which the south is restricted to imitating northern inventions to analyze the effects of ipr policies on developed and developing countries we extend this literature to allow not only for southern innovation and imitation of northern goods but also for imitation targeted at southern innovations we find the effects of iprs on r d and welfare to be non monotonic and dependent on innovation efficiency and an innovation threshold in the south for sufficiently strong iprs the south engages in original r d and stronger iprs promote southern innovation welfare and a reduction in the north south wage gap below the threshold a strengthening of ipr protection fails to promote innovation and decreases welfare stronger iprs exclusively for southern firms can benefit both regions by shifting southern resources from the imitation of northern goods to original southern innovation

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

estimating the effects of global patent protection in pharmaceuticals a case study of quinolones in india under the trips agreement wto members are required to enforce product patents for pharmaceuticals the debate about the merits of this requirement has been extremely contentious many low income economies claim that patent protection for pharmaceuticals will result in substantially higher prices for medicines with adverse consequences for the health and well being of their citizens on the other hand research based global pharmaceutical companies argue that prices are unlikely to rise significantly because most patented products have therapeutic substitutes in this paper we empirically investigate the basis of these claims central to the ongoing debate is the structure of demand for pharmaceuticals in poor economies where because health insurance coverage is so rare almost all medical expense are met out of pocket using a detailed product level data set from india we estimate key price and expenditure elasticities and supply side parameters for the fluoroquinolones sub segment of the systemic anti bacterials i e antibiotics segment of the indian pharmaceuticals market we then use these estimates to carry out counterfactual simulations of what prices profits and consumer welfare would have been had the fluoroquinolone molecules we study been under patent in india as they were in the u s at the time our results suggest that concerns about the potential adverse welfare effects of trips may have some basis we estimate that in the absence of any price regulation or compulsory licensing the total annual welfare losses to the indian economy from the withdrawal of the four domestic product groups in the fluoroquinolone sub segment would be on the order of u s 450 million or about 73 of the sales of the entire systemic anti bacterials segment in 2000 of this amount foregone profits of domestic producers constitute roughly 50 million or 11 the overwhelming portion of the total welfare loss therefore derives from the loss of consumer welfare in contrast the profit gains to foreign producers in the absence of any price regulation are estimated to be only around 53 million per year

what might globalisation s critics believe critics of globalisation object to many things some of which can be easily understood within standard economic models but others of which seem to reflect a view of the world that economists generally do not share this paper attempts to identify several alternative frameworks for analysis within which some of their criticisms may be understood with the ultimate aim of extracting testable implications that differ from standard models three such alternative models are suggested all of which focus mainly on the behaviour of owners and managers of corporate capital an anti labour model in which capitalists are willing to sacrifice some of their own profits for the chance to make labour worse off a labour monopsony model in which capitalists co operate globally to increase profits by depressing wages and an international political economy model in which capitalists use their resources to influence the political process for more than just obtaining import protection this third framework which is not spelled out in any detail here has capitalists seeking policies such as export subsidies and other means of promoting market access and it also has them influencing the international negotiations that set the rules of international agreements and organisations such as the nafta and wto examples of the latter sort of influence are discussed

intellectual property rights violations and spillovers in north south trade abstract the article examines the role of technological spillovers when northern and southern firms compete in quantities on the common world market and when only the northern firm is supposed to conduct innovative activity the intensity of spillovers is interpreted as an indicator of the strength of intellectual property rights ipr protection in this light the paper reconsiders the questions raised in the recent economic analysis of ipr protection in north south relations when and whether the southern countries benefit in welfare terms from protecting ipr how the north fares in this story how large is the conflict between the north and south and what is the optimal level of ipr protection at the world level the paper shows that the common belief that the south generally benefits from relaxing ipr protection while the north is worse off does not carry over in the applied duopoly model with spillovers in this respect the congruence of interests between north and south with respect to southern ipr protection regime should not be an exceptional or even impossible state of affairs

the quality of innovation and the extent of the market abstract i present a comprehensive model of international trade in technology that considers both the demand for inventions and the supply of inventions on the demand side domestic and foreign firms make strategic technology adoption decisions on the supply side inventors compete to sell licenses for their technology to domestic and foreign firms countries benefit from international trade in technology because they obtain the best invention from a larger pool of inventions international trade in technology increases the extent of the market for inventions and thereby improves the quality of innovation technology trade lowers prices increases outputs and increases the volume of trade in differentiated products when traded products are not close substitutes international markets for technology generate gains from trade the results of the analysis are robust to the possibility of technology transfer either through expropriation or imitation protection of intellectual property rights preserves incentives for entry of inventors and improves the quality of innovation

anti foreign bias in the court welfare explanation and evidence from canadian intellectual property litigations abstract are judges concerned in the same way as policy makers with the effects of their decisions on national welfare in this paper we analyze this question by examining the outcomes of intellectual property rights ipr litigations between domestic and foreign firms we use a simple model of oligopoly in which ipr takes the form of a more efficient production technology to illustrate how antiforeign bias varies across cases when judges have welfare concerns the predictions of the model are tested using data on all canadian ipr cases over a four year period we find that foreign firms have about 25 percentage points lower probability of protecting their ipr in canadian courts relative to domestic firms we also find that courts decisions are aligned with national welfare maximization principles so that foreign firms are less likely to win in those cases when the implied welfare gains from not protecting foreign ipr are greater these findings are robust to controlling for endogenous selection of firms into litigation

strategic enforcement intellectual property rights and contractual r d this study examines the role of intellectual property rights iprs in contractual research and development r d in developing countries we find that strong iprs provide incentives for firms both multinational and local to specialize in r d activities in which they have competitive advantage the specialization effect they also facilitate the switching process from imitators to potential innovators for local firms the switching effect moreover we also demonstrate that a multinational firm s strategic iprs enforcement behavior can be an effective instrument for subsidizing contractual r d in developing countries the subsidizing effect we further illustrate how a policy mix of iprs and a foreign direct investment subsidy in these countries affects r d activities by adding an offshore r d subsidiary as an additional organizational form jel l13 o31 o34

a comparison of optimal tariffs and welfare under no lobbying domestic lobbying and domestic foreign lobbying whether and what type of the lobbying induced trade policies can improve the domestic welfare we show that as compared to the case of no lobbying and the case of domestic lobbying the domestic foreign lobbying may achieve the lowest tariff and may also realise the highest welfare for the domestic country our finding provides a theoretical explanation to the prevalent lobbying competition between asian firms and us firms in usa recently we argue that the domestic foreign lobbying may contribute to a freer trade in the domestic country and lobbying competition may be one of the strongest forces pushing for trade liberalisation

appropriate health r d and intellectual property rights reform in developing countries welfare implications of imposing intellectual property rights ipr protection on health goods in developing countries are analysed using a north south model consumption of health goods counteracts adverse effects of region specific diseases on labour supply health needs differ between consumers in innovating and imitating countries weakening the benefits of southern ipr enforcement for the north and strengthening the benefits for the south southern regions with unique health needs are more likely to benefit from ipr enforcement if healthcare infrastructure is adequate and the southern market is large enough to stimulate sufficient innovation there is then also interregional income convergence

pricing profits and technological progress in the pharmaceutical industry the decades old debate over pharmaceutical industry prices profits and innovation has again intensified a number of events coalesced to refocus public interest on pharmaceuticals contributing to public concern were bureau of labor statistics price index increases for pharmaceuticals far outpacing those for the products of other industries another prominent characteristic of the pharmaceutical industry has been its extraordinarily high reported profitability this article examines the phenomena that precipitated the current pharmaceuticals debate their historical antecedents and the principal questions at issue in the author s considered judgment a pell mell march toward regulation of pharmaceutical industry pricing could seriously impair the industry s incentives for investment in new products

innovation intellectual property rights and economic development a unified empirical investigation two important strands of literature investigate the way the effect of intellectual property rights ipr on innovation depends on either the initial ipr level or the level of economic development we expand on this by studying their joint effect in a single unified empirical framework we find that the effect of ipr on innovation is more complex than previously thought displaying important nonlinearities depending on the initial levels of both ipr and per capita gdp the policy implications of this are examined and include the conclusion that a single global level of ipr is in general sub optimal

the impact of higher standards in patent protection for pharmaceutical industries under the trips agreement a comparative study of china and india a comparative study is undertaken that explores chinese and indian pharmaceutical industries under different patent regimes it is found that relative to india which had implemented process patent protection until 2005 china with a product patent regime since 1993 suffers from both lower drug accessibility and availability the latter is a missing parameter in the literature also china lags behind in both lower r d investment and patents filed by chinese nationals based on these findings and associated legal interpretation we conclude that higher patent protection in china generates negative impacts on the pharmaceutical industries thus governments should utilise trips flexibilities and other regimes such as price control to offset the anticompetitive effect in designing patent policies

do national patent laws stimulate domestic innovation in a global patenting environment a cross country analysis of pharmaceutical patent protection 1978 2002 this paper evaluates the effects of patent protection on phar maceutical innovations for 26 countries that established pharmaceutical patent laws during 1978 2002 controlling for country characteristics through matched sampling techniques to establish two proper comparison sets among 92 sampled countries and through country pair fixed effects regressions this study yields robust results national patent protection alone does not stimulate domestic innovation as estimated by changes in citation weighted u s patent awards domestic r d and pharmaceutical industry exports however domestic innovation accelerates in countries with higher levels of economic development educational attainment and economic freedom additionally there appears to be an optimal level of intellectual property rights regulation above which further enhancement reduces innovative activities

the biodiversity bargaining problem we employ cooperative bargaining theory and nash s rational threats idea to cast light on the biodiversity bargaining problem the problem of global environmental negotiations is argued to be of the nature of a bargaining problem in which bargainers must agree on the distribution of cooperative surplus in order to move to the bargaining frontier we discuss the importance of both efficiency bargaining frontier and fairness recognition of characteristics of bargainers in the choice of the appropriate contract we show that the incremental cost contract used to resolve the biodiversity bargaining problem is of the form of an extreme point contract that fails to recognise the contributions of the south to the production of cooperative surplus a rational response to such a contract is the use of threats of biodiversity destruction contracts must evince both efficiency and fairness in order to represent lasting solutions

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

how do patent laws influence innovation evidence from nineteenth century world fairs studies of innovation have focused on the effects of patent laws on the number of innovations but have ignored effects on the direction of technological change this paper introduces a new dataset of close to fifteen thousand innovations at the crystal palace world s fair in 1851 and at the centennial exhibition in 1876 to examine the effects of patent laws on the direction of innovation the paper tests the following argument if innovative activity is motivated by expected profits and if the effectiveness of patent protection varies across industries then innovation in countries without patent laws should focus on industries where alternative mechanisms to protect intellectual property are effective analyses of exhibition data for 12 countries in 1851 and 10 countries in 1876 indicate that inventors in countries without patent laws focused on a small set of industries where patents were less important while innovation in countries with patent laws appears to be much more diversified these findings suggest that patents help to determine the direction of technical change and that the adoption of patent laws in countries without such laws may alter existing patterns of comparative advantage across countries jel d2 k11 l51 no 014

heterogeneity of southern countries and southern intellectual property rights policy we develop a model with one innovating northern firm and heterogeneous southern firms that compete in a final product market we assume southern firms differ in their ability to adapt technology and study southern incentives to protect intellectual property rights we find that in a non cooperative equilibrium governments resist ipr protection but collectively southern countries benefit from some protection we show that in general countries with more efficient firms prefer higher collective ipr protection than those with less efficient firms given the aggregate level of ipr protection it is more efficient if the more efficient countries have weaker ipr protection les auteurs developpent un modele dans lequel coexistent une entreprise innovatrice du nord et des entreprises heterogenes du sud qui se concurrencent dans un marche de produit final on postule que les entreprises du sud different dans leur capacitea adopter la technologie et on etudie les differentes incitations au sud a proteger les droits de propriete intellectuelle dpi il appert que dans un equilibre sans cooperation les gouvernements resistent a la pression pour qu on protege les dpi mais que collectivement ils beneficient de cette protection on montre qu en general les pays dont les entreprises sont les plus efficaces supportent une protection collective des dpi plus robuste que ne le font les pays dont les entreprises sont moins efficaces le niveau general de protection des dpi etant donne c est plus effectif si les pays les plus efficaces ont des niveaux de protection des dpi plus faibles

intellectual property piracy in a north south context empirical evidence the protection of intellectual property rights ipr has been a contentious issue for more than 20 years industrialized nations have moved to knowledge based economies and simultaneously trade barriers have fallen making intellectual property ip vulnerable adding to this vulnerability are conflicting international institutional environments belief systems and economic realities the debate over ipr protection has become a significant global trade issue pitting the net technology producing north against the net technology consuming south with this in mind there has been much debate about the impact of alternative ipr regimes tight or loose on the welfare of southern economies policy makers in both the south and the north search for arguments to convince recalcitrant southern countries to follow the northern model of strict ipr regimes the south faced with a dilemma searches for arguments to justify looser regimes or convince its populace that tighter regimes are in the best interest of the nation the objective of this research is to add empirical clarity about the welfare impacts of weak ipr on the firm and host country to this end we employ a novel methodological design and unique context the research design is deductive in that we use the empirical setting of pioneer argentina s a a seller of bioengineered agricultural seeds to test the existing theory of weak ipr impacts in a north south context

the north s intellectual property rights standard for the south abstract we build a multi sectoral north south trade model to analyze international intellectual property rights ipr protection by comparing the nash equilibrium ipr protection standard of the south the developing countries with that of the north the developed countries we find that the former is naturally weaker than the latter moreover we show that both regions can gain from an agreement that requires the south to harmonize its ipr standards with those of the north and the north to liberalize its traditional goods market this demonstrates the merits of multi sectoral negotiations in the gatt wto

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

new pills for poor people empirical evidence after gatt abstract the protection of pharmaceutical innovations is being dramatically extended as much of the developing world introduces patent protection for new drug products this change in intellectual property rights may lead to more research on drugs to address developing country needs we use new survey data from india the results of interviews and measures of research and development r d constructed from a variety of statistical sources to determine trends in the allocation of research to products specific to developing country markets there is some although limited evidence of an increase in the mid to late 1980s which appears to have leveled off in the 1990s the picture presented provides a baseline against which future patterns in research activity can be compared

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

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

patents and innovation evidence from economic history abstract what is the optimal system of intellectual property rights to encourage innovation empirical evidence from economic history can help to inform important policy questions that have been di

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

alfred marshall lecture intellectual property rights protection in developing countries the case of pharmaceuticals patent enforcement in developing countries generates considerable controversy especially when patents involve potentially life saving drugs this paper argues that common concerns regarding the effects of patents on prices and on research incentives of pharmaceutical multinationals are misplaced rather the most significant effects are likely to concern access to patented drugs in poor countries because prices in developing countries are much lower than in the developed world multinationals may choose to enter such markets with a delay or not at all implying a complete loss of access to patented drugs in developing countries even when multinationals enter countries like india their marketing and distribution networks are not currently built out leading to limited access within the country such considerations may provide a justification for policies targeting access in the short and medium run such as compulsory licensing

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

patent protection and r d with endogenous market structure in a model with endogenous number of innovating firms we show that whether patent protection increases r d investment is ambiguous and depends on the market demand function and the cost of r d if the market size increases with number of firms patent protection reduces r d investment if the cost of r d is sufficiently high and higher product differentiation increases the possibility of lower r d investment under patent protection if the market size does not increase with number of firms patent protection never reduces r d investment we find that welfare is lower under patent protection than under no patent protection

intellectual property rights in china the changing political economy of chinese american interests we review the evolution of modern chinese intellectual property right ipr laws and enforcement and explore economic and political forces involved in international conflicts over chinese ipr protection our analysis considers why the us and china moved from conflict to cooperation over intellectual property rights structural and institutional aspects of the political economy of iprs within each country are considered and data on chinese us trade in intellectual property intensive goods are examined we conclude that although enforcement of iprs within china continues to be relatively weak chinese ipr institutions are converging on those in the oecd nations

optimal regulation and country size this paper studies the relationship between country size and the optimal regulatory policy of firms with market power derived from research and development in equilibrium smaller countries allow less exploitation of market power by innovating firms because smaller countries are more able to free ride upon the incentives to research and development afforded by larger countries the free rider problem implies that the nash equilibrium in government policies is inefficient thus there is an incentive for governments to coordinate their policies finally the model is used to explain past and present regulation of the pharmaceutical industry in canada this paper studies the relationship between country size and the optimal regulatory policy of firms with market power derived from research and development in equilibrium smaller countries allow less exploitation of market power by innovating firms because smaller countries are more able to free ride upon the incentives to research and development afforded by larger countries the free rider problem implies that the nash equilibrium in government policies is inefficient thus there is an incentive for governments to coordinate their policies finally the model is used to explain past and present regulation of the pharmaceutical industry in canada

should patent protection be extended to all developing countries he uruguay round has extended the scope of gatt multilateral trade negotiations well beyond the tariffs that had occupied most previous negotiations in addition to various non tariff barriers which had also been dealt with to a degree in the tokyo round as discussed in deardorff and stern 1983 and 1986 the uruguay round dealt with issues of trade in services international investment and intellectual property since these new issues have conceptually quite different characteristics than the tariffs of previous negotiations it is appropriate to examine them afresh to determine whether the objectives of the uruguay round negotiations can be considered economically sound this paper describes such an analysis for a particular aspect of the intellectual property negotiations patent rights and in the process voices some skepticism about this aspect of the uruguay round s objectives inclusion of trade related intellectual property issues or trips in the uruguay round agenda was done largely at the insistence of the united states firms in the united states have long been concerned that their position at the cutting edge of technological progress was being eroded by unauthorised copying of their intellectual property elsewhere in the world while export of such copied products back into the united states might be restricted under us law this would provide little help in competition with the pirate firms in third country markets

patent breadth in an international setting we examine the nash equilibria of a game where two national governments set patent breadth strategically broader patents make r d more attractive but the effect on static efficiency is nonmonotonic in a north south model where only the north can innovate harmonization of patent breadth lowers welfare relative to the nash equilibrium when both countries can innovate harmonization toward narrower patent breadth may raise world welfare jel f02 f13 o3 o31 o32

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

trade related intellectual property rights industry variation and technology diffusion the wto inspired strengthening of intellectual property rights iprs in developing countries remains highly controversial even more than 15 years after the 1994 trips agreement this paper assesses how a strengthening of iprs aects international technology diusion by altering the volume of high tech exports into developing countries a simple north south general equilibrium model in which industries dier in their imitation rates is developed stronger iprs encourage northern rms in a wider range of industries to start exporting exports in industries with the highest risk of imitation rise while exports in other industries may fall international technology diusion does not necessarily fall with stronger iprs more technology diuses to the south because new high tech products are introduced in the southern market this works against the reduction in technology diusion caused by limited imitation