Will Stronger Intellectual Property Rights Increase International Technology Transfer? Empirical Evidence from U.S. Firm-Level Panel Data

更强的知识产权会增加国际技术转让吗？

• 批准号: 0241781
• 负责人: Lee Branstetter
• 金额: $ 12.44万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-05-01 至 2005-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0241781&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Will; Stronger; Intellectual; Property; Rights

Despite the dedicated efforts of many respected scholars over the last 20 years, the international impact of intellectual property rights (IPR) remains an understudied area within international economics. The proposed study will take a novel approach to the analysis of the impact of changing IPR regimes on innovation and international technology transfer. Over the past two decades, a number of countries undertook extensive unilateral reform of their IPR systems, often in response to diplomatic pressure from the United States or other major trading partners. By employing data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis's survey of U.S. multinational activity, this study will be able to examine the responses of individual multinational enterprises to a series of these reasonably well-documented recent IPR regime changes. The use of firm-level data on exports, investment, affiliate sales, and, especially, technology transfer abroad provides the authors with a number of dimensions of variation within which we can explore these issues. In principle, one can observe the same firm responding to various kinds of IPR reform in different countries, allowing for much better measurement the differential impact of national characteristics and particular aspects of patent reform on the variables of interest. This wealth of data will allow this study to avoid many of the problems that have plagued previous efforts. This improved empirical approach has the potential to deepen understanding of the effects of IPR on firm-level decisions and further inform the current policy debate over the manner in which recent and highly controversial international treaties on intellectual property rights should be implemented. The most significant of these treaties, The TRIPs (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement, concluded in the 1990s, requires a large number of developing countries to strengthen their patent and other intellectual property rights (IPR) systems. While some signatory states still have several years to fully comply with the terms of TRIPs, there is already sharp disagreement between developing and developed nations concerning the impact of TRIPs. Many policymakers in developing nations believe that the policy changes mandated by TRIPs will work against their national economic interests, transferring rents to multinational corporate patentholders headquartered in the world's most advanced countries, especially the United States. Advocates for strong IPR counter that strengthening IPR in developing countries will induce more innovation, both in the developing world and in the developed world, fostering more rapid economic growth. These advocates also believe that a strengthening of IPR will accelerate the transfer of technology from the developed world to the developing world, ensuring a relatively equal distribution of gains from this policy change. As important as this debate is, the competing claims of the opposing sides have been insufficiently grounded in empirical research. By examining the response of multinational firms to international IPR agreements that predated TRIPs, this study will provide invaluable evidence to guide the ongoing international policy debate.

尽管在过去20年中，许多受人尊敬的学者做出了巨大的努力，但知识产权（IPR）的国际影响仍然是国际经济学中的一个研究领域。 拟议的研究将采用一种新颖的方法来分析改变知识产权制度对创新和国际技术转移的影响。 在过去的二十年中，许多国家经常对美国或其他主要贸易伙伴的外交压力进行广泛的单方面改革。 通过采用经济分析局对美国跨国活动调查的数据，这项研究将能够检查单个跨国企业对这些相当有据可查的近期IPR政权变化的响应。 在出口，投资，会员销售，尤其是国外技术转移的情况下，使用公司级别的数据为作者提供了许多差异，我们可以在其中探索这些问题。 原则上，可以观察到对不同国家的各种知识产权改革的响应的同一公司，从而更好地衡量了民族特征的差异影响以及专利改革对感兴趣变量的特定方面。 这些大量数据将使这项研究避免许多困扰以前努力的问题。 这种改进的经验方法有可能加深对IPR对公司层面决策影响的影响，并进一步向当前的政策辩论提供了有关应对知识产权的最新和高度争议的国际条约的方式。 这些条约中最重要的是1990年代总结的旅行（与知识产权的贸易相关方面）协议，要求大量发展中国家加强其专利和其他知识产权（IPR）系统。 尽管某些签署国仍然有几年的时间可以完全遵守旅行的条款，但发展和发展中的国家与旅行的影响之间已经存在明显的分歧。 许多发展中国家的政策制定者认为，旅行规定的政策变化将违反其国民经济利益，将租金转移给总部位于世界上最先进国家（尤其是美国）的跨国公司公司专利权人。 倡导强有力的知识产权反对意见，即发展中国家的IPR在发展中国家和发达国家中都会引起更多的创新，从而促进更快的经济增长。 这些拥护者还认为，加强知识产权将加速技术从发达国家到发展中国家的转移，从而确保从这种政策变化中获得相对平等的收益分配。 与这场辩论一样重要，对立方面的相互竞争主张在实证研究中的基础不足。 通过研究跨国公司对前往旅行的国际知识产权协议的反应，这项研究将提供宝贵的证据，以指导正在进行的国际政策辩论。