Intellectual Property Rights, Foreign Direct Investment, and Industrial Development / Lee Branstetter, Kamal Saggi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Branstetter, Lee.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Saggi, Kamal.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w15393.

NBER working paper series no. w15393

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2009.

Summary:

This paper develops a North-South product model in which Southern imitation and the North-South flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) are endogenously determined. In the model, a strengthening of IPR protection in the South reduces the rate of imitation, which, in turn, increases the flow of FDI. The increase in FDI more than offsets the decline in production undertaken by Southern imitators, so that the South's share of goods produced by the global economy increases. Furthermore, real wages of Southern workers increase even though prices of goods produced by multinationals exceed those of Southern imitators. The preceding results hold when Northern innovation is endogenously determined; in addition, the rate of innovation increases with a strengthening of Southern IPR protection.

Notes:

Print version record

October 2009.