Intellectual property rights in a quality-ladder model with persistent leadership

Christian Kiedaisch

European Economic Review, 2015, vol. 80, issue C, 194-213

Abstract: This paper analyzes the effects of intellectual property rights in a quality-ladder model of endogenous growth in which incumbent firms preemptively innovate in order to keep their position of leadership. Unlike in models with leapfrogging, granting forward protection, and imposing a non-obviousness requirement reduces growth. In the main case where entrants and incumbents have free access to the same R&D technology, infinite protection against imitation, granted independently of the size of the lead, maximizes growth. If entrants have to engage in costly catch up before they can undertake frontier R&D, growth is maximal for a finite (expected) length of protection against imitation.

Keywords: Intellectual property rights; Cumulative innovation; Persistent leadership; Forward protection; Non-obviousness requirement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L40 O31 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292115001439
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Intellectual property rights in a quality-ladder model with persistent leadership (2012)
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:eecrev:v:80:y:2015:i:c:p:194-213

DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2015.09.005

Access Statistics for this article

European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer

More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().