TY  - JOUR
AU  - Scotchmer,Suzanne
TI  - The Political Economy of Intellectual Property Treaties
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9114
PY  - 2002
Y2  - August 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9114
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9114.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Suzanne Scotchmer
Department of Economics
Evans Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA  94720-3880
Tel: 510/643-8562
Fax: 510/643-9657
E-Mail: scotch@berkeley.edu
AB  - Intellectual property treaties have two main types of provisions: national treatment of foreign inventors, and harmonization of protections. I address the positive question of when countries would want to treat foreign inventors the same as domestic inventors, and how their incentive to do so depends on reciprocity. I also investigate an equilibrium in which regional policy makers choose IP policies that serve regional interests, conditional on each other's policies. I compare these policies with a notion of what is optimal, and argue that harmonization will involve stronger IP protection than independent choices. Harmonization can either enhance or reduce global welfare. Levels of public and private R&D spending will be lower than if each country took account of the uncompensated externalities that its R&D spending confers on other countries. The more extensive protection engendered by attempts at harmonization are a partial remedy.
ER  -