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on Intellectual Property Rights |
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Issue of 2017‒03‒19
three papers chosen by Giovanni Ramello Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale “Amedeo Avogadro” |
| By: | Badri Narayan G. (School of Environmental and Forestry Sciences, University of Washington-Seattle, USA) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how new trade rules under mega-regional agreements (in the Asia Pacific and the Atlantic) aim to liberalise ‘substantially all trade and investment’ but commitments undertaken by member countries could potentially impact on the health of the public in these countries. The mechanism of impact that the paper examines is through tariff elimination and the requirements of stronger intellectual property commitments for partner countries. We analyse two interlinked policy concerns: first, how tariff reduction/elimination under mega regional agreements impact on prices of tobacco and tobacco products as well as sugar and sugary beverages. Second, how mega regional agreements with Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) like and TRIPS-plus commitments could modify intellectual property rules among partner countries and impact on developing countries’ access to life saving drugs and access to medicines. Using dynamic-GTAP model we find that there are significant health consequences of commitments undertaken by developing countries. Simulation results reveal: first, production of sugar increases under trade agreements with potential detrimental health effects. Second, stricter intellectual property rules under mega trade agreements lead to net global gains but developing countries suffer in terms of adverse health impact and from regulatory chill effect. |
| Keywords: | Economic Integration; Trade Policy; Government policy |
| JEL: | F15 F13 I18 |
| Date: | 2017–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bam:wpaper:bafes09&r=ipr |
| By: | Ernest MIGUELEZ; Claudia NOUMEDEM TEMGOUA |
| Abstract: | This paper documents the influence of networks of highly-skilled migrants on international knowledge flows. It adds to the growing literature on highly-skilled international migration and its contribution to international knowledge diffusion, in migrants’ home as well as host countries. In particular, it first explores knowledge feedbacks to home countries generated by migrant inventors, a representative category of high-skilled migrants, most of them scientists and engineers. Second, it investigates the knowledge inflows to host countries brought by inventors. We test our hypothesis of a positive relationship between knowledge flows and highly skilled migration in a country-pair gravity model setting, for the period 1990-2010, using patent citations across countries as a measure of international knowledge diffusion. Our results confirm our initial assumption on the positive impact of highly skilled migrants on knowledge flows to their homelands as well as to their host countries. We find doubling the number of inventors of a given nationality at a destination country, leads to an 8.3% increase in knowledge outflows to their home economy from that same host land; while a similar increase in the number of migrant inventors produces a 6% increase in the knowledge inflows to the host economy. |
| Keywords: | migration, brain gain, diaspora, diffusion, inventors, patents, PCT patents |
| JEL: | C8 J61 O31 O33 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grt:wpegrt:2017-07&r=ipr |
| By: | Laurent Bergé (CREA, Université du Luxembourg); Nicolas Carayol, GREThA, UMR CNRS 5113, Université de Bordeaux (GREThA, UMR CNRS 5113, Université de Bordeaux); Pascale Roux (GREThA, UMR CNRS 5113, Université de Bordeaux) |
| Abstract: | Social networks are expected to matter for invention in cities, but empirical evidence is still puzzling. In this paper, we provide new results on urban patenting covering more than twenty years of European patents invented by nearly one hundred thousand inventors located in France. Elaborating on the recent economic literatures on peer effects and on games in social networks, we assume that the productivity of an inventor’s efforts is positively affected by the efforts of his or her partners and negatively by the number of these partners’ connections. In this framework, inventors’ equilibrium outcomes are proportional to the square of their network centrality, which encompasses, as special cases, several well-known forms of centrality (Degree, Katz-Bonacich, Page-Rank). Our empirical results show that urban inventors benefit from their collaboration network. Their production increases when they collaborate with more central agents and when they have more collaborations. Our estimations suggest that inventors’ productivity grows sublinearly with the efforts of direct partners, and that they incur no negative externality from them having many partners. Overall, we estimate that a one standard deviation increase in local inventors’ centrality raises future urban patenting by 13%. |
| Keywords: | invention ; cities; network centrality; co-invention network; patent data |
| JEL: | O31 R11 D85 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:luc:wpaper:17-03&r=ipr |