Growth and welfare effects of intellectual property rights when consumers differ in income

Christian Kiedaisch

No 221, ECON - Working Papers from Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: This paper analyzes how changing the expected length of intellectual property (IP) protection affects economic growth and the welfare of rich and poor consumers. The analysis is based on a product-variety model with non-homothetic preferences and endogenous markups in which, in accordance with empirical evidence, rich households consume a larger variety of goods than poorer ones. The effects of IP protection on growth can be either positive or negative, depending on the distribution of income and wealth. Given that increasing the length of IP protection increases growth, poorer households prefer a shorter length of protection than richer ones.

Keywords: Intellectual property rights; income distribution; endogenous growth; non-homothetic preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D30 L16 O15 O31 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-03, Revised 2017-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fdg, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-knm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Growth and welfare effects of intellectual property rights when consumers differ in income (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:econwp:221

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