The TRIPS Agreement as a Coercive Threat: Estimating the Effects of Trade Ties on IPR Protection Regimes

Ryan Cardwell and Pascal Ghazalian

Global Economy Journal (GEJ), 2015, vol. 15, issue 2, 257-275

Abstract: Negotiators from developed countries pushed hard for the inclusion of the TRIPS Agreement in the WTO set of agreements because it was viewed as a potentially effective method of coercing developing countries to strengthen their protection of intellectual property rights (IPR). We investigate whether the threat of cross-agreement retaliation, which could be authorized in disputes regarding the TRIPS Agreement, is effective in changing countries’ IPR protection regimes. The results from a panel empirical model suggest that both the TRIPS Agreement and the strength of trade ties with developed countries are important determinants of IPR protection regimes, but the vulnerability to potential trade losses through cross-agreement retaliation is not a uniformly significant determinant across geo-economic regions. These results extend beyond the TRIPS Agreement and highlight the potential ineffectiveness of the WTO’s retaliation mechanism as a coercive threat.

Keywords: TRIPS Agreement; intellectual property; WTO; panel estimation; cross-agreement retaliation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1515/GEJ-2014-0026
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
Journal Article: The TRIPS Agreement as a Coercive Threat: Estimating the Effects of Trade Ties on IPR Protection Regimes (2015)
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:wsi:gejxxx:v:15:y:2015:i:02:n:gej-2014-0026

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1515/GEJ-2014-0026

Access Statistics for this article

Global Economy Journal (GEJ) is currently edited by Joseph Pelzman

More articles in Global Economy Journal (GEJ) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().