What are the effects of the WTO’s TRIPS Agreement on growth, welfare and income inequality? To analyze this question, we develop an open-economy R&D-growth model with wealth heterogeneity. Under TRIPS, the North experiences higher growth and welfare at the expense of higher income inequality. As for the South, it experiences higher growth at the expense of lower welfare and higher income inequality. There exists a critical degree for the domestic importance of foreign goods below (above) which global welfare decreases (increases) under TRIPS. In light of our findings, we discuss policy implications on China’s accession to the WTO in 2001.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
10956.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations O34 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Intellectual Property Rights
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: