the assessment competition policy the paper advances four propositions concerning the objectives content and institutions of competition policy first the role of policy should be to advance economic efficiency rather than competition for its own sake or some wider definition of the public interest second economic analysis is generally ambiguous a priori about the efficiency effects of particular market structures and conduct third the design of policy and institutions needs to reflect this ambiguity policy rules are essential but there should be scope for parties to argue countervailing efficiency benefits a policy institution should be empowered to identify investigate and propose remedies for failures of competition subject to review by an independent competition tribunal fourth international harmonization of competition policies is essential current policies in the u k and ec and relationships between the two are evaluated and the case made for a radical reform of u k policy copyright 1993 by oxford university press

parallel imports price controls and innovation the impact of parallel trade on innovation in r d intensive industries such as pharmaceuticals is a hotly debated question in antitrust and ip policy the well known argument that parallel trade dampens innovation by undermining firms ability to price discriminate has been challenged by recent literature the argument is that with endogenous price controls parallel trade increases innovation by reducing governments incentives to set particularly low price caps in this paper we show that this result crucially depends on the degree of homogeneity of the trading countries the result only holds if consumers in poorer countries have a relatively similar demand for medication as consumers in richer countries instead when countries are relatively heterogeneous parallel trade dampens innovation and lowers welfare by exporting price cap regulation from poorer to richer countries these findings are in line with recent case evidence we also show that when patent length is endogenous richer countries will tend to choose longer patent protection with parallel trade whereas equilibrium price caps tend to be tighter in that case

dynamic analysis of innovation and international transfer of technology through licensing abstract this paper develops a quality ladder type dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous innovation and technology licensing as a major source of international technology transfer in developing countries examining the dynamic characteristics of the model fully we explore the short and long run effects of both an improvement in the probability of reaching a licensing agreement with a given effort and an increase in the license fee rate the model shows that the former promotes innovation and technology transfers in both the long and short run while the latter discourages them

implications of intellectual property rights for dynamic gains from trade a simple intellectual property rights iprs framework is introduced into a dynamic quality ladder model of technological diffusion between innovating firms in one country and imitating firms in another country the presence of technological spillovers and feedback effects between firms in the two countries demonstrates that even when steady state growth increases transition costs sometimes dominate steady state welfare gains most existing models of international iprs find that high intellectual property enforcement in the imitating country leads to welfare gains in the innovating country at the expense of the imitating country in contrast we find ipr regimes that even after accounting for transition costs positively affect welfare in both countries preferred ipr regimes maintain competition from imitative activity but enforce some remuneration to innovators for the spillovers they generate well designed ipr regimes imposed at the time of trade liberalization will be welfare enhancing for both regions relative to trade liberalization without ipr enforcement this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

consumers and the brain drain product and process design and the gains from emigration abstract we consider the welfare effects of skilled worker emigration in a context where skilled labor plays a role in product or process design we show such emigration can benefit the residents left behind even when consumers tastes exhibit a form of home bias this is because emigration improves the design of goods designed by skilled emigrants but consumed in the sending country in contrast to existing models of beneficial brain drain our results do not require agglomeration economies education related externalities remittances return migration or an emigration lottery instead they are driven purely by differences in market size that induce skilled emigrants to design better products or production processes abroad than at home

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

is the wto passe the wto has delivered policy outcomes that are very different from those likely to emerge out of the recent wave of preferential trade agreements ptas should economists see this as an efficient institutional hand off where the wto has carried trade liberalization as far as it can manage and is now passing the baton to ptas to finish the job this paper surveys a growing economics literature on international trade agreements and argues on this basis that the wto is not passe rather and subject to some caveats this survey of research to date suggests that the wto warrants strong support while a more cautious view of ptas seems appropriate

a welfare analysis of global patent protection in a model with endogenous innovation and foreign direct investment abstract this paper constructs a north south quality ladder model in which foreign direct investment fdi is determined by the endogenous location choice of firms and examines analytically how strengthening patent protection in the south affects welfare in the south strengthening patent protection increases the south s welfare by enhancing innovation and fdi but it also allows the firms with patents to charge higher prices for their goods which decreases welfare however the model shows that the former positive welfare effect outweighs the latter negative effect moreover introducing the strictest form of patent protection in the south that is harmonizing patent protection in the south with that in the north may maximize welfare in the south as well as in the north further a similar result can also be obtained in a nonscale effect model

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

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

worldwide venture capital intellectual property rights and innovation this study based on the historical data of venture capital vc investment and patenting for 99 countries and 83 industries explores the effects of vc investment on firms innovation in different intellectual property rights ipr environments worldwide utilizing large data sets and various empirical models our negative binomial and panel data analysis presents the significant and positive impacts of vc investment and ipr parameters on firms innovation controlling for cultural regulatory and economic and market conditions of the business environment however vc investment is more effective in weaker ipr environments this effect is robust to a number of different specifications for endogeneity among other things the economic effect is pronounced the impact of vc on patents is up to five times more pronounced between the weakest and strongest ipr regime in the sample

the welfare cost of one size fits all patent protection to analyze the welfare gain from allowing for differentiated patent protection across sectors this study develops a two sector quality ladder growth model in which patent breadth is a policy variable and derives optimal patent breadth under two patent regimes we show that a uniform optimal patent breadth is a weighted average of sector specific optimal patent breadth and b sector specific optimal patent breadth is larger in the sector that has a larger market size and more technological opportunities to derive the optimal policy we allow for an arbitrary path of patent breadth and derive the optimal path by solving a stackelberg differential game we find that the optimal path of patent breadth under each patent regime is stationary time consistent and subgame perfect finally we perform a numerical investigation and find that even a moderate degree of asymmetry across sectors can generate a significant welfare cost of uniform patent protection

an empirical investigation of the pollution haven effect with strategic environment and trade policy abstract using a new dataset on the stringency and enforcement of environmental policy this study is the first to find robust confirmation of a pollution haven effect in a cross country context by accounting for strategically determined environment trade and intellectual property right ipr policies a simple game theoretic approach to policy determination is described which suggests an identification strategy based on other country characteristics it is found that for the top 20th percentile of countries in terms of growth in u s multinational affiliate value added as much as 8 6 of that growth between 1999 and 2003 can be attributed to declining relative stringency and enforcement of environmental policy the results are robust to a number of identification tests weak iv tests and third country spatial effects further evidence is found that relatively footloose industries are more likely to be affected by environmental policy than more traditionally dirty industries and enforcement of environmental policies tends to be a more important deterrent than the stringency of the policy set

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

bidding for brains intellectual property rights and the international migration of knowledge workers we introduce international mobility of knowledge workers into a model of nash equilibrium ipr policy choice among countries we show that governments have incentives to use iprs in a bidding war for global talent resulting in nash equilibrium iprs that can be too high rather than too low from a global welfare perspective these incentives become stronger as developing countries grow in size and wealth thus allowing them to prevent the poaching of their brains by larger wealthier markets

modeling agricultural innovation in a rapidly developing country the case of chinese pesticide industry technology and innovation play an increasingly important role in the economic development of both developed and developing countries we investigate how policy and market factors influence firms or other potential inventors decisions on innovation or imitation by developing a model that emphasizes expected market size appropriability and technological opportunity we empirically test the model using provincial pesticide innovation data from a rapidly developing country china we find that the government encouraged local innovation by opening regions to more international trade by increasing investments in public research and education and by strengthening intellectual property right ipr enforcement to meet its wto trips obligations moreover while ipr enforcement and increases in market size are important in encouraging innovation empirical evidence is mixed as inventors respond to these factors differently policies to increase expected market size could increase copying rather than inducing r d investments and extended patent life may reinforce the original standing of infringers as well as inventors

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

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

endogenous r d and intellectual property laws in developed and emerging economies the incentive of providing protection of intellectual property has been analyzed both for an emerging economy as well as for a developed economy the optimal patent length and the optimal patent breadth within a country are found to be positively related to each other for a fixed structure of laws abroad moreover a country can respond to stronger patent protection abroad by weakening its patent protection under certain circumstances and by strengthening its patent protection under other circumstances these results depend upon the curvature of the r d production function finally we investigate the impact of an increase in the willingness to pay in the emerging economy and find conditions under which there is an improvement in both patent length as well as patent breadth in the emerging economy

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

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 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

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

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

is there a case for non discrimination in the international protection of intellectual property abstract we evaluate the case for non discrimination in international patent protection when trade is not subject to any frictions barriers requiring national treatment nt does not affect the rate of innovation and welfare since unfavorable discrimination suffered abroad by innovators in the absence of nt is fully offset by favorable discrimination enjoyed by them at home when trade barriers exist however such international offsetting in patent protection is incomplete and innovation incentives are actually lower under nt by lumping domestic and foreign patent protection together nt blunts the overall effectiveness of patent protection in incentivizing innovation in the presence of trade barriers

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

appropriate intellectual property protection and economic growth in countries at different levels of development this paper examines how the role of patents and utility models in innovation and economic growth varies by level of economic development using a panel dataset of over 70 countries we find that patent protection is an important determinant of innovation and that patentable innovations contribute to economic growth in developed countries but not in developing instead in developing economies a minor form of intellectual property rights iprs namely utility models is conducive to innovation and growth controlling for other factors using korean firm level data as a case study we find that utility model innovations contribute to firm performance when firms are technologically lagging and that those minor innovations can be a learning device and thus a stepping stone for developing more patentable inventions later on upon reaching higher levels of technological capabilities firms become more reliant upon patents and less on utility models thus the lesson here is that patent protection enhances innovation and economic growth in countries where the capacity to conduct innovative research exists where this capacity is weaker a system that provides incentives to conduct minor incremental inventions is more conducive to growth the significance of this paper is to emphasize the importance not just of the strength of iprs but of the appropriate type of iprs for economic development

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

the social opportunity cost of rural labour hodge i 1982 the social opportunity cost of rural labour reg studies 16 000 000 when new employment is generated in times of involuntary unemployment the social opportunity cost of labour will be less than the market wage in assessing the social value of projects it is therefore necessary to identify the extent of this differential in this paper an approach to the evaluation of the social opportunity cost of labour is described which models the process of labour adjustment subsequent to the creation of new vacancies a markov chain approach is adopted in order to quantify the impact on the labour force as the consequent changes work through the system and the opportunity cost of labour at various stages is measured on the basis of assumed productivities of employees in their alternative occupations finally the impediments to this adjustment process in rural areas are discussed

the effect of patents on trade abstract in contrast with quotas and tariffs it is theoretically ambiguous whether fewer or weaker rules over intellectual property rights will increase or decrease trade in patentable goods the prevailing view is that anticipation of imitation reduces exporters incentive to export goods to jurisdictions with weak patent regimes this empirical paper uses new measures of how the destination country patent system can affect trade in contrast with existing studies which assume would be exporters can always get a patent in the target foreign market we construct measures of the bias against foreign patent applicants and patents which may block imported goods we find evidence that the presence of destination country blocking patents has the larger negative impact on international trade being refused a patent also has a negative impact on trade but the magnitude is smaller

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

international protection of intellectual property we study the incentives that governments have to protect intellectual property in a trading world economy we consider a world economy with ongoing innovation in two countries that differ in market size and in their capacities for innovation after describing the determination of national patent policies in a non cooperative regime of patent protection we ask why is intellectual property better protected in the north than in the south we also study international patent agreements by deriving the properties of an efficient global regime of patent protection and asking whether harmonization of patent policies is necessary or sufficient for global efficiency jel o34 f13 during the 1980 s and early 1990 s the united states and several european countries expressed strong dissatisfaction with what they deemed to be inadequate protection of intellectual property in many developing countries the developed countries made the upgrading of intellectual property rights iprs one of their highest priorities for the uruguay round of trade talks their efforts bore fruit in the agreement on traderelated aspects of intellectual property rights trips which was approved as part of the final act of the uruguay round trips establishes minimum standards of protection for several categories of intellectual property for example in the area of new technology it essentially harmonizes

adjustment costs and the sequencing of trade liberalisation a common feature of trade agreements between countries is that the integration of markets proceeds in stages this paper examin es conceptually the role played by adjustment costs in determining the best way to structure an agreement between two countries when there are multiple sectors to be liberalised adjustment costs to liberalisatio n of industries might influence the timing of liberalisatio n with the analysis bearing similarity to why tariff reductions tend to be phased in over time when two industries have no spillover eff ects trade agreements with sequential liberalisation will be less costly to sustain however if the liberalisation of one in dustry influences permanently the flow of benefits from liberalising the other industry simultaneous liberalisation may be easier to sustain

intellectual property protection and the industrial composition of multinational activity in a north south model with endogenous fdi we examine the impact of southern ipr protection on the mode and industrial composition of international technology transfer a novel feature of the model is that due to technological reasons industries differ with respect to their susceptibility to imitation in equilibrium licensing occurs in industries where the risk of imitation is low and fdi where it is of intermediate magnitude stronger iprs in the south i alter the industrial composition of multinational activity towards licensing at the expense of fdi ii reduce local imitation and iii increase licensing and to a lesser extent fdi

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