trade policy in a super size me world abstract when a foreign monopolist sets a single market clearing price for its product the sign of the optimal tariff is determined by the extent of pass through also known as the terms of trade effect however when a foreign monopolist employs a second degree price discrimination mechanism in the domestic market the calculus of welfare maximization is very different while there are still terms of trade effects from the imposition of a tariff the existence of such effects are neither necessary nor sufficient to determine the sign of the optimal tariff instead the distribution of valuations within the population is the key determinant of the nature of policy intervention this result differs significantly from the uniform price case and is driven by the incentive compatibility constraint which places the distribution of types at the center of the analysis if there is a relatively large fraction of high valuation types in the population then domestic information rents may be increased by subsidizing imports thereby increasing the consumption of the low valuation types and moving the incentive constraint in favor of the high valuation types however if the share of high types in the population is relatively small then the increase in information rents will also be small but the fiscal implications of a subsidy will be large consequently the optimal policy will be to impose a trade tax

the short term impact of unconditional cash transfers to the poor experimental evidence from kenya we use a randomized controlled trial to study the response of poor households in rural kenya to unconditional cash transfers from the ngo givedirectly the transfers differ from other programs in that they are explicitly unconditional large and concentrated in time we randomized at both the village and household levels furthermore within the treatment group we randomized recipient gender wife versus husband transfer timing lump sum transfer versus monthly installments and transfer magnitude us 404 ppp versus us 1 525 ppp we find a strong consumption response to transfers with an increase in household monthly consumption from 158 ppp to 193 ppp nine months after the transfer began transfer recipients experience large increases in psychological well being we find no overall effect on levels of the stress hormone cortisol although there are differences across some subgroups monthly transfers are more likely than lump sum transfers to improve food security whereas lump sum transfers are more likely to be spent on durables suggesting that households face savings and credit constraints together these results suggest that unconditional cash transfers have significant impacts on economic outcomes and psychological well being

patenting in the shadow of competitors this article empirically examines the patenting behavior of new biotechnology firms that have different litigation costs i show that firms with high litigation costs are less likely to patent in subclasses with many other awards particularly those of firms with low litigation costs this pattern is consistent with the literature on costly litigation which suggests that firms that have high litigation costs will take greater precautions to avoid litigation these results are robust to a variety of control variables and modifications that seek to test alternative explanations

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

characterization of the von neumann morgenstern stable set in a non cooperative model of dynamic policy making with a persistent agenda setter abstract we generalize the dynamic bargaining game of diermeier and fong 2011 to arbitrary quota rules to provide a non cooperative characterization of the von neumann morgenstern stable set assuming that players are sufficiently patient and have strict preferences a pure strategy stationary equilibrium exists and in any such equilibrium a policy is a steady state if and only if it is in the stable set the result provides a non cooperative foundation of stable sets in settings with dynamic policy making and a persistent agenda setter

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

who enjoys trips abroad an empirical analysis of intellectual property rights in the uruguay round analysis of the uruguay round is extended by quantifying the impact of the trips agreement the static costs of raising the standards of patent protection are captured by the transfers of income between countries with the majority of countries estimated to make net payments abroad the united states being a major beneficiary to offset these transfers the model provides estimates of the dynamic benefits from the greater incentive to innovate revealing that there is potential for all countries to benefit from the trips agreement in the long run however the distribution of these benefits is highly skewed towards developed countries jel classification o34 f43 qui tire profit des adpics a l etranger une analyse empirique des droits de propriete intellectuelle dans la ronde de l uruguay on analyse les decisions de la ronde de l uruguay en vue de quantifier l impact de l accord sur les droits de propriete intellectuelle qui touchent au commerce les couts statiques de normes plus elevees pour la protection des brevets sont mesures par les transferts de revenus entre pays on estime que la majorite des pays effectuent des transferts nets vers l exterieur et que les etats unis sont un beneficiaire important de ces transferts pour compenser ces transferts le modele cherche a determiner les avantages dynamiques qu il y a a encourager ainsi l innovation et montre qu il y a un potentiel de gains pour tous les pays decoulant des accords sur les adpics a plus long terme cependant la repartition de ces avantages est fortement biaisee en faveur des pays developpes

characteristics of patent litigation a window on competition we examine the patenting behavior of firms in an industry characterized by rapid technological change and cumulative innovation recent survey evidence suggests that semiconductor firms do not rely heavily on patents to appropriate returns to r d yet the propensity of semiconductor firms to patent has risen dramatically since the mid 1980s we explore this apparent paradox by conducting interviews with industry representatives and analyzing the patenting behavior of 95 u s semiconductor firms during 1979 1995 the results suggest that the 1980s strengthening of u s patent rights spawned patent portfolio races among capital intensive firms but it also facilitated entry by specialized design firms copyright 2001 by the rand corporation

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

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

does money matter the effects of cash transfers on child development in rural ecuador abstract a large body of research indicates that child development is sensitive to early life environments so that poor children are at higher risk for poor cognitive and behavioral outcomes these developmental outcomes are important determinants of success in adulthood yet remarkably little is known about whether poverty alleviation programs improve children s developmental outcomes we examine how a government run cash transfer program for poor mothers in rural ecuador influenced the development of young children random assignment at the parish level is used to identify program effects our data include a set of measures of cognitive ability that are not typically included in experimental or quasi experimental studies of the impact of cash transfers on child well being as well as a set of physical health measures that may be related to developmental outcomes the cash transfer program had positive although modest effects on the physical cognitive and socioemotional development of the poorest c

dynamic pivotal politics we analyze a dynamic extension of a parsimonious model of lawmaking in which preferences evolve over time and today s policy becomes tomorrow s status quo unlike in existing models of pivotal politics policy makers voting behavior depends on the institutional environment and on their expectations about future economic and political shocks relative to sincere voting the equilibrium behavior exhibits a strategic polarization effect which increases with the degree of consensus required by the institution the volatility of the policy environment and the expected ideological polarization of the future policy makers the equilibrium behavior also exhibits a strategic policy bias which works against any exogenous policy bias embedded in the voting rule our analysis implies that the existing literature underestimates the inertial effect of checks and balances and overestimates the impact of institutional biases such as fiscally conservative budget procedures

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

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

child health and household resources in south africa evidence from the old age pension program this paper presents nonparametric evidence on the effects of the expansion of the old age pension program in south africa on child health did this increase in household resources improve child health and nutrition does the gender of the recipient of the pension affect its impact the answers to these questions have very important policy implications there is evidence that inadequate nutrition during childhood and even in utero affects long term physical development as well as the development of cognitive skills this in turn affects productivity later in life see partha dasgupta 1993 john strauss and duncan thomas 1998 t paul schultz 1999 in the united states the evidence suggests that monetary transfers to the poor have very little impact on child welfare janet currie 1995 susan mayer 1997 however the effects of parental income and monetary transfers on child outcomes are likely to be of greater magnitude among poor households in developing countries the south african pension program provides an unusual opportunity to evaluate the possible effects of such a monetary transfer this paper exploits the rapid increase in the coverage and benefits of the old age pension program in south africa which took place in the early 1990 s anne case and angus deaton 1998 at the end of the apartheid era the government committed to achieving parity of benefits and eligibility requirements between whites and africans this was achieved mostly by increasing the benefits received by the africans in 1993 80 percent of african women above age 60 and 77 percent of african men above 65 received the pension the maximum benefit of 370 rands per month aproximately 3 per day was equal to half of the minimum wage and about twice the median income per capita in rural areas due to living arrangements inherited from the apartheid era close to onethird of african children under the age of 5 currently live with a pension recipient children who live with a pension recipient tend to come from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds as a consequence they tend to be smaller than other children their age to estimate the effect of receiving a pension on the anthropometric status of children this paper exploits the fact that height reflects accumulated investments in child nutrition the larger the proportion of her life during which a child is well nourished the taller she will be given her age due to the expansion of the program in the early 1990 s individuals of qualified age became more likely to receive a pension and the benefits became substantially larger thus children born after the expansion of the program are more likely to have spent a larger fraction of their lives wellnourished if they live with a pension recipient to the extent that the pension resulted in improved nutrition in this paper i present nonparametric evidence of the program s effect on nutrition based on this observation

imitation costs and patents an empirical study it has long been recognised that the costs of imitating new products have an important effect on the incentives for innovation in a market economy as arrow i962 and others have pointed out if firms can imitate an innovation at a cost that is substantially below the cost to the innovator of developing the innovation there may be little or no incentive for the innovator to carry out the innovation in their discussions of the innovation process economists frequently have called attention to the major role played by the costs of imitation but there has been little or no attempt to measure these costs to test various hypotheses concerning the factors influencing them or to estimate their effects in this paper we report some findings of what seems to be the first study of this topic in addition we present data regarding the effects of patents on imitation costs and on the rate of innovation

on dynamic compromise abstract most legislatures require the consent of only a simple majority to pass a proposal so why don t legislative outcomes favor only a bare majority we show that compromise can be achieved if legislators are neither too impatient nor too patient and initial allocations are not too unequal the compromise is only sustainable if starting from the unequal allocations there is a possibility of spiraling towards a complete absence of compromise we find that the range of discount factors for which the equilibrium exists increases as the number of legislators increases in this sense compromise is easier in larger legislatures

cash transfers and health evidence from tanzania how do conditional cash transfers impact health related outcomes this paper examines the 2010 randomized introduction of a program in tanzania and finds nuanced impacts an initial surge in clinic visits after 1 5 years due to more visits by those already complying with program health conditions and by non compliers disappeared after 2 5 years largely due to compliers reducing above minimal visits the study finds significant increases in take up of health insurance and the likelihood of seeking treatment when ill health improvements were concentrated among children ages 0 5 years rather than the elderly and took time to materialize the study finds no improvements after 1 5 years but 0 76 fewer sick days per month after 2 5 years suggesting the importance of looking beyond short term impacts reductions in sick days were largest in villages with more baseline health workers per capita consistent with improvements being sensitive to capacity constraints these results are robust to adjustments for multiple hypothesis testing

health nutrition and economic development the relationship between health and economic development is explored focusing on nutrition based health indicators the spotlight is placed on the inter related feedbacks between the influence of health on productivity on one hand and the influence of income on health status on the other disentangling causality in these relationships has preoccupied much of the literature we evaluate different empirical strategies that have been adopted and assess the results there is now a body of evidence based on careful empirical studies that demonstrates a causal relationship between health and labor productivity there is also evidence that at least among the very poor additional income is spent on improved nutrition there are two issues that have received little attention although we argue they are likely to be very important first measurement of health is discussed in detail evidence is presented on how taking into account differences in the extent of measurement error is critical for interpreting the impact of health on wages the same theme emerges in studies of the effect of income on health specifically calorie intake the key role of non linearities in these relationships is highlighted and we demonstrate that a good deal of the variation in estimates of income elasticities of demand for calories can be ascribed to the role of measurement and functional form authors

estimates of the value of patent rights in european countries during the post 1950 period this paper examines the distribution of the values of patent rights in the united kingdom france and germany during the post 1950 period these values are inferred from the behavior of patentees with respect to payment of renewal fees on their patents a simple economic model of renewal decisions is combined with data on the proportion of patents renewed at alternative ages and the renewal fee schedules to produce estimates of the distribution and the total value of patent rights in these countries moreover the data indicate that there have been changes in the value distribution and we follow these changes over the period the empirical results of particular interest concern the total value of patent rights and the relationship between changes in it and changes in the quantity of patents the skew in the distribution of patent values and the rate of obsolescence on the returns to patents

cash or condition evidence from a cash transfer experiment this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled cash or condition evidence from a cash transfer experiment conducted from 2008 to the end of 2009 in malawi the study observed the impact of conditionality in cash transfer programs with two distinct interventions unconditional transfers uct arm and transfers conditional on school attendance cct arm targeted at adolescent girls in malawi on individual level dropout rates declined in both treatment arms however the uct arm is 43 percent as large as the cct arm the fraction of days attended in the cct arm is significantly higher than the uct cognitive ability math and english scores significantly improve for the cct but not for the uct probability of pregnancy and marriage were much lower in the uct arm the delays in marriage and fertility in the uct arm are found entirely among adolescent girls who dropped out of school after the start of the intervention improvements in human capital for the recipients of the cct are achieved at the cost of worse outcomes for people who drop out of school funding for the study derived from the global development network bill and melinda gates foundation national bureau of economic research nber africa project world bank research support budget grant world bank knowledge for change trust fund world development report 2007 small grants fund spanish impact evaluation fund and gender action plan trust fund

patents as options some estimates of the value of holding european patent stocks in many countries holders of patents must pay an annual renewal fee in order to keep their patents in force this paper uses data on the proportion of patents renewed and the renewal fees faced by post world war ii cohorts of patents in france the united kingdom and germany in conjunction with a model of patent holders renewal decisions to estimate the returns earned from holding patents in these countries since patents are often applied for at a nearly stage in the innovation process the model allows agents to be uncertain about the sequence of returns that will be earned if the patent is kept inforce formally then the paper presents and solves a discrete choice optimal stochastic control model derives the implications of the model on aggregate behaviour and then estimates the parameters of the model from aggregate data the estimates enable a detailed description of the evolution of the distribution of returns earned from holding patents over their life spans and calculations of both the annual returns earned from holding the patents still in force or the patent stocks in the alternative countries and the distribution of the discounted value of returns earned from holding the patents in a cohort this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

legal efficiency and consistency abstract we analyze the efficiency and consistency of court decisions under common and civil law as a leading example we study the enforcement of property rights judges are of two types some are conservative and follow the precedent or the statute while others maximize social welfare when courts intervene ex post after the relevant economic choices have been made welfare maximizing courts face a commitment problem such an ex post bias has implications on the relative consistency and efficiency of each legal system surprisingly we find that court decisions are more consistent under common law than under civil law the welfare comparison between the two systems is instead ambiguous however in changing economic environments common law is more likely to dominate civil law because of its greater adaptability

estimating the value of proposal power this paper investigates the role of proposal power in the allocation of transportation projects across u s congressional districts in 1991 and 1998 the evidence supports the key qualitative prediction of legislative bargaining models members with proposal power those sitting on the transportation authorization committee secure more project spending for their districts than do other representatives support for the quantitative restrictions on the value of proposal power is more mixed i then empirically address several alternative models of legislative behavior including partisan models informational roles for committees models with appropriations committees and theories of committees as preference outliers

political economy of redistribution it is often argued that additional constraints on redistribution such as granting veto power to more players in society better protects property from expropriation we use a model of multilateral bargaining to demonstrate that this intuition may be flawed increasing the number of veto players or raising the supermajority requirement for redistribution may reduce protection on the equilibrium path the reason is the existence of two distinct mechanisms of property protection one is formal constraints that allow individuals or groups to block any redistribution that is not in their favor the other occurs in equilibrium where players without such powers protect each other from redistribution players without formal veto power anticipate that the expropriation of other similar players will ultimately hurt them and thus combine their influence to prevent redistributions in a stable allocation the society exhibits a class structure with class members having equal wealth and strategically protecting each other from redistribution

crop diversification and child health empirical evidence from tanzania malnutrition is recognized as a major issue among low income households in developing countries with long term implications for economic development recently crop diversification has been considered as a strategy to improve nutrition and health however there is no systematic empirical evidence on the role played by crop diversification in improving human health we use three waves of the tanzania national panel survey to test the effect of crop diversification on child health we implement two instrumental variable approaches and perform several robustness checks to address potential endogeneity concerns we find a positive but small effect of an increase in crop diversification on child height for age z score through greater dietary diversity the effect is larger for subsistence households and children living in households with limited market access