Special Interest Politics and Intellectual Property Rights: An Economic Analysis of Strengthening Patent Protection in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Angus Chu

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Since the 80’s, the pharmaceutical industry has benefited substantially from a series of policy changes that have strengthened the patent protection for brand-name drugs as a result of the industry’s political influence. This paper incorporates special interest politics into a quality-ladder model to analyze the policymakers’ tradeoff between the socially optimal patent length and campaign contributions. The welfare analysis suggests that the presence of a pharmaceutical lobby distorting patent protection is socially undesirable in a closed-economy setting but may improve social welfare in a multi-country setting, which features an additional efficiency tradeoff between monopolistic distortion and international free-riding on innovations.

Keywords: campaign contributions; intellectual property rights; patent length; special interest politics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 O31 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-pol
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Related works:
Journal Article: SPECIAL INTEREST POLITICS AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS: AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF STRENGTHENING PATENT PROTECTION IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:4349

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