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研討會總覽

【Job talk】Equilibrium IPR Protections, Innovation and Imitation in A Globalized World

2024/03/07
  • 研討會日期 : 2024-03-07
  • 時間 : 14:00
  • 主講人 : Mr. Leo Lam
  • 地點 : Conference Room B110
  • 主持人 : Professor Terry Cheung
  • 演講者簡介 : Mr. Lam is expected to receive his Ph.D. in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis in 2024. His research fields are Macroeconomics, International Economics, and Innovation. He is applying for a position of the Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica now.
  • 演講摘要 : What determines the levels of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in a globalized economy? How does it impact developing and developed countries? To answer these questions, this paper develops a two-country endogenous growth model in which firms can innovate and imitate locally and globally, and governments choose IPR policies strategically. Beyond the traditional static cost and dynamic benefit from IPR protection, this framework spotlights three key dynamic burdens: limiting domestic imitation, restricting global imitation, and discouraging escape-competition innovation. From the empirical analysis on patent assignments and patent litigation data between the US and China, I find (i) the US domestic distribution of technologies is relatively stable, while China’s domestic distribution transformed from the 1990s to the early 2000s and has stabilized since 2005; (ii) the global distribution of technology has transformed from a US-dominant position to become more even; (iii) both local and global imitation are positively correlated with technology gaps. The quantitative analysis suggests three main findings. First, strengthening IPR enforcement leads to an inverted-U-shaped long-run growth rate. Second, governments’ horizon matters. Strong short-run benefits of imitation cause both governments to pick weaker IPR policies when they consider transitional welfare. Lastly, the Nash equilibrium suggests that both countries should enforce lower IPR protections. The over-protection results in significant welfare losses of 6.4% and 7.2% for the US and China, respectively.