Stage-dependent intellectual property rights

Angus Chu, Guido Cozzi and Silvia Galli ()

Journal of Development Economics, 2014, vol. 106, issue C, 239-249

Abstract: Inspired by the Chinese experience, we develop a Schumpeterian growth model of distance to frontier in which economic growth in the developing country is driven by domestic innovation as well as imitation and transfer of foreign technologies through foreign direct investment. We show that optimal intellectual property rights (IPR) protection is stage-dependent. At an early stage of development, the country implements weak IPR protection to facilitate imitation. At a later stage of development, the country implements strong IPR protection to encourage domestic innovation. Therefore, the growth-maximizing and welfare-maximizing levels of patent strength increase as the country evolves towards the world technology frontier, and this dynamic pattern is consistent with the actual evolution of patent strength in China.

Keywords: Economic growth; Stage-dependent intellectual property rights (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O34 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438781300148X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Theory and Empirics of Stage-Dependent Intellectual Property Rights (2013)
Working Paper: Innovating like China: a theory of stage-dependent intellectual property rights (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:106:y:2014:i:c:p:239-249

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2013.10.005

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().