IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qed/wpaper/1018.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Distributive Implications Of Patents On Indivisible Goods

Author

Listed:
  • Dan Usher

    (Department of Economics, Queen's University)

Abstract

Patents raise the price and reduce consumption of the patented good, but the resulting deadweight loss is thought to be worth bearing when patent protection is required as an incentive to invention. The newly-invented good generates a residual surplus, making people better off than they would be if the good had not been invented. This well-known argument is usually framed in a context where people are identical, everybody's demand curve for the newly-invented good is the same and everybody shares to some extent in the residual surplus. However, when the newly-invented good is indivisible - like a heart transplant or the treatment of AIDS, where, in effect, a person consumes either one full unit of the good or none - the effect of a patent is to concentrate the entire benefit of the patented good upon the rich, leaving the poor no better off than if the good had not been invented.

Suggested Citation

  • Dan Usher, 2004. "The Distributive Implications Of Patents On Indivisible Goods," Working Paper 1018, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    • Handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1018
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econ.queensu.ca/sites/econ.queensu.ca/files/qed_wp_1018.pdf
    File Function: First version 2004
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Patents; Indivisible Goods;

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • K11 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Property Law
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1018. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mark Babcock (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/qedquca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.