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on Intellectual Property Rights |
| By: | Carlotta Nani; Martin Alejandro Correa; Julio Raffo |
| Abstract: | This paper examines gender disparities in intellectual property (IP) awareness and participation, using the 2023 and 2025 waves of the WIPO Pulse Survey conducted among 58, 135 individuals across seventy-four countries. Our findings reveal that copyrights are the most recognized IP forms globally, while patents, trademarks and geographical indications remain the least familiar. At the individual level, women demonstrate lower knowledge of patents and trademarks, but greater knowledge of designs and copyrights compared to men, with these differences persisting after controlling for socioeconomic factors. These patterns are consistent with gendered specialization in education, professional and household spheres where women tend to cluster in creative industries while men dominate entrepreneurship and technical sectors. Notably, we observe a cohort effect: while we identify significant differences in knowledge between men and women for older cohorts, these disappear among younger cohorts. We do not observe comparable changes by level of education or occupation of respondents. Moreover, women exhibit more positive attitudes towards IP-protected products across categories. These findings highlight the need for targeted awareness campaigns and reveal that gendered patterns of IP knowledge may contribute to innovation gender gaps through educational pathways and professional specialization. |
| Keywords: | Intellectual property, Gender equality, Gender disparities, Surveys |
| JEL: | O34 O31 J16 C83 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wip:wpaper:100 |
| By: | Sandra Baquie; Yueling Huang; Ms. Florence Jaumotte; Jaden Kim; Rafael Machado Parente; Samuel Pienknagura |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a global empirical analysis of how industrial policies (IPs) affect patent applications, with an instrumental-variable strategy that addresses selection in policy targeting by leveraging retaliatory dynamics. On average, IPs do not increase domestic patent applications over a four-year period, except when they target sectors with potential distortions or externalities, such as infant industries or low-carbon technologies. However, IPs temporarily boost foreign patent filings within the same timeframe, consistent with strategic front-loading by foreign inventors seeking to secure technology protection, and perhaps market access, in the IP-targeted sector. This link between foreign patent applications and IPs is stronger for export-oriented policies compared to domestic subsidies, for IPs targeting innovation-central sectors, and in emerging markets and developing economies. |
| Keywords: | Industrial Policies; Innovation; Patents; Networks; Low-carbon technology |
| Date: | 2026–03–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2026/047 |
| By: | Georgios Tsiachtsiras (White Research SRL, Belgium.); Sergio Petralia (Department of Economic Geography, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.); Ernest Miguelez (AQR-IREA, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.); Rosina Moreno (AQR-IREA, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.) |
| Abstract: | This article studies how anti-scientific sentiment can shape the direction of technological change, focusing on the tensions between the Catholic Church and the French Republic in late nineteenth-century France. We construct a novel geo-referenced database of French patents filed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (1838-1960) and combine it with historical measures of religiosity at the departmental level. We find that areas with higher shares of refractory clergy, those who refused to swear allegiance to the revolutionary state, produced significantly fewer electrical patents between 1890 and 1914. Crucially, this negative relationship does not extend to other technological fields or to overall patenting activity. Neither education nor migration explains this pattern. We also show that early electrical patenting predicts later activity in computer and communication technologies, consistent with path-dependent technological development. These findings suggest that conservative institutional environments did not suppress innovation broadly, but selectively discouraged disruptive technologies that challenged established norms, with consequences that persisted for decades. |
| Keywords: | Innovation; Patent Data; Religion; Path-dependence; Technological Change. JEL classification: L92; N73; O31; O33; P25. |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ira:wpaper:202606 |