قدرت درونی حقوق مالکیت معنوی: مفاهیم برای توسعه و رشد اقتصادی

The key institution that determines sustained growth in R&D-based growth models is the strength of intellectual property rights, which are usually assumed to be exogenous. In this paper we endogenize the strength of the intellectual property rights and show how private incentives to protect these rights affect economic development and growth. Our model explains endogenous differences in intellectual property rights across countries as private incentives to invest in property rights generate multiple equilibria. We show that the resulting institutional threshold offers an explanation for why the effect of a transfer of institutions from one country to another depends on the quality of the institutions that were imported.

The protection of property rights and the appropriation of rents are central aspects of R&D-based growth models whose engine of growth is the return to innovation. As a consequence, a voluminous literature has examined the costs and benefits of intellectual property right (IPR) protection and their effects on innovation and growth. The existing analyses all share an emphasis on the government's choice of the degree of IPR protection.1 Yet, both public and private choices about enforcement are important in determining the de facto strength of IPR protection. In contrast to the previous literature, this paper examines the role of private investments in the (endogenous) degree of IPR protection and their impact on economic growth. We focus on the private incentives to invest in IPR protection, taking formal institutions, such as the existence of a patent office, as given.2 Our interest in private investment is motivated by the evidence that private patent infringement suits are often necessary steps to establishing patent value. Khan (2003), in her description of the early British patent system, argues that “potential patentees were well advised to obtain the help of a patent agent to aid in negotiating the numerous steps […][…] required for pursuit of the application in London”, and that even after the patent had been awarded “patent rights could not be regarded as settled unless the patent had been contested in court with a favorable outcome”.

We integrate endogenous strength of intellectual property rights into an R&D based growth model to analyze the effects of endogenous institutional quality on the performance of the economy. We argue that the enforcement of IPRs requires resources (in our case, labor), and that private agents have the incentives to invest such resources to protect their intellectual property. The model highlights two key relationships. On the one hand, stronger IPR protection raises the return to innovation and leads to greater research effort and lower manufacturing employment. On the other hand, better IPR protection increases labor productivity in manufacturing employment, lowers labor demand, and thus reduces the cost of subsequent IPR protection. Multiple equilibria emerge naturally, featuring high/low/no growth stationary states with strong/weak/no IPR protection, respectively.