International Protection of Intellectual Property: A Quantitative Assessment

IPR policies each period. I use country heterogeneity in education, population, and bilateral trade costs to induce IPR protection choices and firm productivity distributions consistent with the data. I compare the benchmark open economy model to a model without trade and find that the latter generates a similar rank-ordering of country IPR choices, but IPR choices decrease 2%, on average. I also show that imposing government commitment decreases IPR choices substantially. Finally, I ask who wins and who loses under a harmonized IPR standard? To answer this, I compare the benchmark model to a planner's solution where the planner chooses and commits to a single IPR policy for all countries. I find the planner's IPR policy is significantly lower than the benchmark US policy. Though average country welfare decreases, developed countries are largely better off.