Intellectual property and market size

Michele Boldrin () and David K. Levine

No 360, Staff Report from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Abstract: Intellectual property protection involves a trade-off between the undesirability of monopoly and the desirable encouragement of creation and innovation. As the scale of the market increases, due either to economic and population growth or to the expansion of trade through treaties such as the World Trade Organization, this trade-off changes. We show that, generally speaking, the socially optimal amount of protection decreases as the scale of the market increases. We also provide simple empirical estimates of how much it should decrease.

Keywords: Intellectual property; International trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ino and nep-tid
Date: 2005
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