Growth and Intellectual Property

Michele Boldrin, David K. Levine

NBER Working Paper No. 12769
Issued in December 2006
NBER Program(s):   EFG

Intellectual property (IP) protection involves a trade-off between the undesirability of monopoly and the desirable encouragement of creation and innovation. Optimal policy depends on the quantitative strength of these two forces. We give a quantitative assessment of current IP policies. We focus particularly on the scale of the market, showing that as it increases, due either to growth or to the expansion of trade, IP protection should be reduced.

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Acknowledgments

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