نوآوری، تقلید و حقوق مالکیت معنوی: معرفی مهاجرت در مدل Helpman

We introduce perfect international labour mobility between the North and the South into the Helpman [Helpman, E., 1993. Innovation, imitation, and intellectual property rights. Econometrica 61 (6), 1247–1280] North South model. We analyse the effect of strengthening the intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in the South and the effect of an increase in labour endowment there on the rate of innovation in the North and on the volume of South North migration in the steady state equilibrium. The strengthening of IPR protection may produce a positive effect on the rate of innovation if the consumers are very patient in their intertemporal choice. The increase in the Southern labour endowment also has a positive effect on the rate of innovation. These results are opposite to those obtained in the Helpman [Helpman, E., 1993. Innovation, imitation, and intellectual property rights. Econometrica 61 (6), 1247–1280] model.

Technological change plays the most important role in determining the rate of economic growth of a country. Strengthening the intellectual property rights (IPR) protection is an important factor influencing technological change. This issue has received substantial attention in recent times. The agreement on the Trade Related Intellectual Property issues (TRIPs) under the GATT-WTO of 1994 requires that the developing countries should strengthen their intellectual property rights (IPR) protection. Formal scientific studies analysing the effects of strengthening IPR protection on the technological progress are also available in the theoretical and empirical literature of international trade, and there has been an ongoing debate on this issue. Existing theoretical literature is based either on the product variety framework developed by Grossman and Helpman (1991b) or on the quality ladder framework developed by Grossman and Helpman (1991a).1 Models developed by Helpman (1993), Lai (1998), etc. are also based on product variety framework in which technological change is viewed as product development. In all these models, R&D sector develops new product designs (technology) using labour as input, and thus, the number of products (varieties) grows over time. Also all these models consider a world consisting of an innovative North and an imitating South and assume the existence of a steady state growth equilibrium of the entire world economy. In Grossman and Helpman (1991b), imitation rate in the South is endogenously determined. However, this rate of imitation is treated as exogenous in Helpman (1993) and in Lai (1998). Grossman and Helpman (1991b) and Helpman (1993) do not consider imitation through multinationalisation of Northern firms in the South. However, in Lai (1998), the Southern firms can imitate only after multinationalisation has taken place. The nature of the effect on the rate of innovation due to strengthening of IPR protection also varies from model to model. In Grossman and Helpman (1991b) and in Helpman (1993), strengthening of IPR protection in the South lowers the rate of innovation in the North. However, Lai (1998) shows that the rate of innovation is increased due to strengthening of IPR protection when multinationalisation is the channel of production transfer. All these North South models of product development and endogenous growth ignore the issue of international labour mobility. These models assume labour endowments to be country specific though the per capita expenditure and hence the instantaneous level of utility of each of the two regions is endogenously determined. There is no international labour mobility even if the per capita real spendings in the two regions are different in equilibrium. There are substantial empirical evidences of international labour mobility taking place in the real world. The static two country competitive equilibrium models as well as the dynamic North–South models of exogenous growth have dealt with this problem. The existing literature consists of the works of Bhagwati and Rodriguez (1976), Kenen (1971), Grubel and Scott (1966), Rivera-Batiz, 1981 and Rivera-Batiz, 1982, Watanabe (1969), Thompson (1984), Roemer (1983), Saavedra Rivano and Wooton (1983), Wooton (1982), Mountford (1997), Bhagwati and Hamada (1974), Galor and Stark (1991), Ethier, 1985 and Ethier, 1986, Djajic (1989), etc. Macmillan (1982) has made an interesting survey of this literature. Lundborg and Segerstrom, 2000 and Lundborg and Segerstrom, 2002 analyse the growth and welfare effects of international migration using the quality ladder framework developed by Grossman and Helpman (1991a). However, no such analysis has been made in the product variety structure and we plan to fill up this gap. In this paper, we introduce perfect international mobility of labour between the North and the South because this is a standard assumption made in the existing static and dynamic models of factor mobility. Following Lundborg and Segerstrom, 2000 and Lundborg and Segerstrom, 2002, we also assume that the migration incentive depends on the difference between the per capita real spendings of the two countries. This is so because the agents are infinitely lived in our model and the instantaneous utility of an infinitely lived agent is determined not by the instantaneous wage rate2 but by the per capita real spending. As a result, in the migration equilibrium, the real per capita expenditure in the North is equal to that in the South in our model, and this equality is not satisfied in Helpman (1993) model because it assumes labour to be internationally immobile. We then analyse the effects of strengthening IPR protection in the South on the rate of innovation in the North in the steady state growth equilibrium. We show that the policy of strengthening IPR protection in the South may raise the rate of innovation in the North if the consumers are very patient in their intertemporal choices. Our result may contradict to that of Helpman (1993) who shows that the strengthening of IPR protection in the South never improves the long run rate of innovation in the North. So while the theoretical results of Helpman (1993) go against the policy prescription of strengthening IPR protection in the less developed countries, our exercise points out a case where one can advocate this policy. Our model also shows that the rate of innovation in the North varies positively with the size of the Southern labour endowment. In Helpman (1993), rate of innovation in the North is independent of the change in the Southern labour endowment. The basic model is presented in Section 2. The comparative steady state effects of strengthening IPR protection in the South and of changes in the labour endowments in the two countries are analysed in Section 3. Concluding remarks are made in Section 4.

We introduce international labour mobility in an otherwise identical Helpman (1993) North South model of product development. Migration incentive depends on the difference of per capita real spendings and, in migration equilibrium, per capita real spendings in the two regions are equalised. We analyse the effects of strengthening IPR protection in the South on the rate of innovation in the North and on the volume of international migration. We find some interesting results. The strengthening of IPR protection may have a positive effect on the rate of innovation as well as on the volume of South North migration in this extended model. Helpman (1993) finds a negative effect on the rate of innovation. The increase in the labour endowment in the South has a positive effect on the rate of innovation in this model. However, this cannot be found in Helpman (1993). Our results have important policy implications. International migration from the South to the North is a common feature of the present day world. We can advocate the policy of strengthening IPR protection in the less developed countries in this environment following the lines of recommendations of TRIPs under the GATT-WTO of 1994. Also the developments of health and education sectors in the less developed countries lead to the improvement in the labour efficiency there, and this raises the global rate of growth. However, our analysis is subject to all other limitations common to Helpman (1993) model. For example, we do not consider the cost of imitation in the South,20 multinationalisation of firms from the North to the South,21 innovation in the South,22 etc. If we consider all these issues simultaneously then the model becomes highly complicated. We also assume the existence of a steady state equilibrium and do not analyse the transitional dynamic properties of this model. The equations of motion become highly complicate, and no meaningful qualitative results can be drawn from their solutions. Helpman (1993) model was simple enough to derive the transitional dynamic properties. Hence, in this extended model, we cannot derive any definite qualitative result related to the welfare effect in each of the two countries. However, the positive effect on the rate of innovation should produce a favourable effect on the welfare level in each of the two countries because one component of the change in the level of welfare in Helpman (1993) is related to the change in the rate of innovation (see Helpman (1993), Section 3, pp. 1264–1265).