Innovation, Growth and Intellectual Property Rights in the Global Economy

This book is about the economic analysis of innovation, growth, intellectual property rights (IPRs) and the relationship among them, with an emphasis on the relevance to the global economy. This book aims to help the reader to understand these issues through the lens of rigorous economic analysis, and to use the models presented as a basis to carry out empirical work and build new models to answer new questions. First, there is an in-depth economic analysis of international policy coordination in IPRs among countries. The cross-border externalities that domestic protection of IPRs confers on foreign countries are a central feature of these analyses. The relationship between the North and the South is emphasized. The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) under the auspices of the World Trade Organization is analyzed in detail. In the context of an international product cycle, we analyze how IPRs in the South affects the rate of production transfer from the North to the South, the rate of innovation in the North and the relative wage of the South. Next, the book analyzes the role of IPRs in the context of closed economy innovation-driven endogenous growth models. Finally, several models of the microeconomics of IPRs and innovation are discussed. It is proved that the degree of IPRs protection that maximizes welfare is in general smaller than that which maximizes the rate of innovation. The economics of 'international exhaustion' of IPRs and the law and economics of 'domestic exhaustion' of IPRs are analyzed.