Trade, innovation and optimal patent protection

David Hemous, Simon Lepot, Ralph Ossa, Thomas Sampson and Julian Schärer

No 456, ECON - Working Papers from Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: This paper provides the first quantitative analysis of optimal patent policy in trading economies. We develop a new framework that combines trade and growth theory into a tractable quantitative model, which we estimate to match patent and trade data. Counterfactual analysis yields three main results. First, potential gains from international cooperation over patent policies are large, but achieving them requires stronger protection in countries more closely integrated with innovative economies. Second, only a small share of these gains has been realized so far. Third, by pushing towards policy harmonization, the TRIPS agreement hurts developing countries without generating global welfare gains.

Keywords: Intellectual property rights; trade policy; patents; growth; quantitative trade; TRIPS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F10 F13 F55 O34 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-09, Revised 2025-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-int, nep-ipr and nep-tid
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https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/238643/15/econwp456.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Trade, innovation and optimal patent protection (2023)
Working Paper: Trade, Innovation and Optimal Patent Protection (2023)
Working Paper: Trade, innovation and optimal patent protection (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:econwp:456

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