Knowledge Enclosures, Forced Specializations and Investment Crisis

Filippo Belloc () and Ugo Pagano

European Journal of Comparative Economics, 2012, vol. 9, issue 3, 445-483

Abstract: Like land before the industrial revolution, in the present global economy much knowledge is being enclosed in private hands. In this paper we argue that these enclosures have become a major factor in specialization among firms and among countries: both are forced to specialize in the fields that are not restricted by the enclosures of the others. We use data on 26 OECD countries over the 1978-2006 period. We estimate the effect of patents endowments of countries on their investment specialization across sectors and show that knowledge enclosures involve self-reinforcing innovation patterns. Moreover, we perform a structural change analysis and find that the TRIPs agreement has significantly strengthened the relationship between countries' patents specialization and investment specialization. We conclude by suggesting that stronger international patent protection may restrict global investment opportunities, and this may be one of the factors contributing to the present crisis.

Keywords: IPRs; innovation; knowledge enclosure; technological specialization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 F55 L20 O34 P17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Working Paper: Knowledge Enclosures, Forced Specializations and Investment Crisis (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:liu:liucej:v:9:y:2012:i:3:p:445-483

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