Macroeconomic Effects of Intellectual Property Rights: A Survey

Angus Chu

No 09-A007, IEAS Working Paper : academic research from Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

Abstract: This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection as well as empirical evidence on the effects of patent rights. Then, the second part considers the international aspects of IPR protection. In summary, this paper draws the following conclusions from the literature. Firstly, different patent policy instruments have different effects on R&D and growth. Secondly, there is empirical evidence supporting a positive relationship between IPR protection and innovation, but the evidence is stronger for developed countries than for developing countries. Thirdly, the optimal level of IPR protection should tradeoff the social benefits of enhanced innovation against the social costs of multiple distortions and income inequality. Finally, in an open economy, achieving the globally optimal level of protection requires an international coordination (rather than the harmonization) of IPR protection.

Keywords: economic growth; income inequality; patent policy; international coordination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 F13 O34 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2009-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-mic
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econ.sinica.edu.tw/~econ/pdfPaper/09-A007.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Macroeconomic Effects of Intellectual Property Rights: A Survey (2009)
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:sin:wpaper:09-a007

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IEAS Working Paper : academic research from Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by HsiaoyunLiu ().