Do patents over-compensate innovators?

State-dependent intellectual property rights policy

Vincenzo Denicolo' ()

Economic Policy, 2007, vol. 22, issue 52, 680-729

Abstract: Is the current level of patent protection too high or too low? To address this issue, this paper reformulates the theoretical analysis of the optimal level of patent protection to take into account the empirical findings of the innovation production function literature. This literature finds a strong relationship between R&D spending and inventions and estimates an elasticity of the supply of inventions of 0.5 or more. The paper then assesses the current level of patent protection, exploiting estimates of the private and social returns to R&D taken from the empirical literature and other available sources. Although more research is needed for a more precise assessment, the evidence available suggests that patents do not over-compensate innovators.— Vincenzo Denicolò

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1468-0327.2007.00188.x (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:oup:ecpoli:v:22:y:2007:i:52:p:680-729.

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Policy is currently edited by Ghazala Azmat, Roberto Galbiati, Isabelle Mejean and Moritz Schularick

More articles in Economic Policy from CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po Contact information at EDIRC., CES Contact information at EDIRC., MSH Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().