Information and intellectual property: The global challenges

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh () and Luc L. Soete

No 29, UNU-MERIT Working Paper Series from United Nations University, Maastricht Economic and social Research and training centre on Innovation and Technology

Abstract: The paper analyses the contribution of 'golden papers' - seminal works whose ideas remain as fresh and relevant today as when they were first published decades ago - and which continue to dominate academic discourse among successive generations of scholars. The authors analyse why two works written within an industrial development context: The simple economics of basic scientific research, by Richard Nelson (1959) and Kenneth Arrows Economic Welfare and the Allocation of Resources for Invention (1962), are so relevant in today’s knowledge-driven economic paradigm. Focusing on the papers’ application to current global policy debates on information/knowledge and intellectual property, they argue that while the context has changed the essential nature of innovation - driven by widespread access to the ability to replicate and improve - remains the same. Hence a focus on endogenous innovation policy is as relevant today as it was 50 years ago.

Keywords: knowledge economy; science and technology; innovation; intellectual property rights; institutional change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O34 O32 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-ino, nep-net and nep-sog
Date: 2006
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Journal Article: Information and intellectual property: the global challenges (2006)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dgr:unumer:2006029

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