Impact of strengthening Intellectual Property Rights Regime on income inequality: An econometric analysis

Swati Saini and Meeta Mehra ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of strengthening Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) on within-country income inequality for a cross-section of 65 developed and developing countries for the time period 1995-2009.Our results indicate that strengthening of IPRs has led to an increase in income inequality in WTO-member developing countries after they started modifying their national IPR regimes to conform to the TRIPs requirements. IPRs tend to raise income inequality by generating a more skewed distribution of wages. Stronger IPRs increase the demand for skilled labor force as it raises the return on R&D activities. This causes a relative increase in skilled labor wages, creating a wage bias in favor of skilled labor against unskilled labor, thus aggravating income inequality within a developing country. Moreover, the effect on inequality is more pronounced for developing countries that are experiencing higher per capita GDP growth rates. As for the developed countries included in the sample, the analysis seems to suggest that IPRs have led to a decline in income inequality over the study period.

Keywords: Developing countries; Globalization; Inequality; Intellectual Property Rights (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F62 F63 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-02-02, Revised 2014-06-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-ipr and nep-pr~
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/75456/9/MPRA_paper_75456.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/75456/1/MPRA_paper_56710.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/90220/1/MPRA_paper_90220.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Impact of strengthening Intellectual Property Rights Regime on income inequality: An Econometric Analysis (2018)
Working Paper: Impact of Strengthening Intellectual Property Rights Regime on Income Inequality: An Econometric Analysis (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:56710

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