Direct foreign investment and intellectual property reform in the South

Sunil Kanwar and Stefan Sperlich

Journal of International Development, 2023, vol. 35, issue 6, 1456-1477

Abstract: We study the association between intellectual property (IP) reform in developing countries and their foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows over 2004–2015, after their transition period under the World Trade Organization. Using conditional difference‐in‐differences estimation, we find unambiguous evidence that stronger IP rights spur FDI inflows. Further, this response is heterogenous across countries and time. Whereas the effect of a unit increase in IP protection on the percentage increase in FDI$$ FDI $$ inflows remains about 0.50 for countries with small magnitudes of knowledge assets (roughly 15 ‘international patents’), it declines to about 0.25 for countries with larger knowledge capital (say, 5000 ‘international patents’). The results are robust to numerous robustness checks.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.3735

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:wly:jintdv:v:35:y:2023:i:6:p:1456-1477

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of International Development is currently edited by Paul Mosley and Hazel Johnson

More articles in Journal of International Development from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().