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on Intellectual Property Rights |
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Issue of 2018‒10‒22
five papers chosen by Giovanni Ramello Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale “Amedeo Avogadro” |
| By: | Stefano BRESCHI; Francesco LISSONI; Ernest MIGUELEZ |
| Abstract: | Based on an original dataset linking patent data and biographical information for a large sample of US immigrant inventors with Indian names and surnames, specialized in ICT technologies, we investigate the rate and determinants of return migration. For each individual in the dataset, we both estimate the year of entry in the United States, the likely entry channel (work or education), and the permanence spell up to either the return to India or right truncation. By means of survival analysis, we then provide exploratory estimates of the probability of return migration as a function of the conditions at migration (age, education, patenting record, migration motives, and migration cohort) as well as of some activities undertaken while abroad (education and patenting). We find both evidence of negative self-selection with respect to educational achievements in the US and of positive self-selection with respect to patenting propensity. Based on the analysis of time-dependence of the return hazard ratios, return work migrants appear to be negatively self-selected with respect to unobservable skills acquired abroad, while evidence for education migrants is less conclusive. |
| Keywords: | immigration, innovation, inventor data, patent data |
| JEL: | F22 O15 O31 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grt:wpegrt:2018-20&r=ipr |
| By: | Andrea Morrison; Sergio Petralia; Dario Diodato |
| Abstract: | More than 30 million people migrated to the US between the 1850s and 1920s. In the order of thousands became inventors and patentees. Drawing on an original dataset of immigrant inventors to the US, we assess the city-level impact of immigrants patenting and their potential crowding out effects on US native inventors. Our study contributes to the different strands of literature in economics, innovation studies and economic geography on the role of immigrants as carriers of knowledge. Our results show that immigrants? patenting is positively associated with total patenting. We find also that immigrant inventors crowd-in US inventors. The growth in US inventors? productivity can be explained also in terms of knowledge spill-overs generate by immigrants. Our findings are robust to several checks and to the implementation of an instrumental variable strategy. |
| Keywords: | immigration, innovation, knowledge spill-over, patent, age of mass migration, US |
| JEL: | F22 J61 O31 R3 |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:1835&r=ipr |
| By: | Langinier, Corinne (University of Alberta, Department of Economics); Marcoul, Philippe (University of Alberta) |
| Abstract: | Self-funded patent offices should be concerned with patent quality (patents should be granted to only deserving innovations) and quantity (as revenues come from fees paid by applicants). In this context, we investigate what is the impact of the self-funded constraint on different bonus contracts, and how these contracts affect the examiners incentive to prosecute patent applications. We consider contracts in which a patent office offers bonuses on quantity quotas (explicit contract) and on quality outcome (either an implicit contract or an explicit contract based on a quality proxy). We find that a self-funded constrained agency should make different organization choices of incentives. For a low quality proxy precision, an agency facing a tight budget operates well with implicit contracts. However, by only relaxing moderately the budget constraint, the agency might be worse off simply because this will preclude implicit contracts. Only very large patenting fees might allow the agency to compensate for the loss of implicit contracts. |
| Keywords: | Patents; Examiners; Explicit and Implicit Contracts; Self-funded Agency |
| JEL: | D23 D86 O34 |
| Date: | 2018–10–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:albaec:2018_014&r=ipr |
| By: | Langinier, Corinne (University of Alberta, Department of Economics); Ray Chaudhuri, Amrita (University of Winnipeg) |
| Abstract: | We develop a theoretical framework to investigate the impact of patent policies and emission taxes on green innovation that reduces the emission output ratio, and on the emission level. In the absence of green consumers, the introduction of patents results in a paradox whereby increasing emission tax beyond a certain threshold leads to a discrete increase in the emission level, which may be avoided by reducing the patenting cost. In the presence of green consumers, this paradox is restricted to an intermediate range of tax rates, and at sufficiently high tax rates, reducing the patenting cost may increase the emission level. Also, higher emission taxes increase green investment only if the fraction of green consumers is sufficiently small, and the magnitude of this effect decreases as this fraction increases. Moreover, a stricter patentability requirement is only effective at reducing emissions if the fraction of green consumers is sufficiently small. |
| Keywords: | Patent; Clean Technologies; Environmentally Friendly Consumers; Rebound Effect |
| JEL: | L13 O34 Q50 |
| Date: | 2018–10–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:albaec:2018_015&r=ipr |
| By: | Dongya Koh (University of Arkansas); Raul Santaeulalia-Llopis (MOVE-UAB and Barcelona GSE); Yu Zheng (Queen Mary University of London) |
| Abstract: | We study the behaviour of the US labor share over the past 70 years. We find that the capitalization of intellectual property products in the national income and product accounts entirely explains - in a purely accounting sense - the observed decline of the US labor share. We assess the implications of this result for the US macroeconomic model and discuss the way forward. |
| Keywords: | Labor Share, Intellectual Property Products, Capital, 1999- and 2013-BEA Revisions |
| JEL: | E01 E22 E25 |
| Date: | 2018–10–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qmw:qmwecw:873&r=ipr |