Cumulative Innovation, Growth and Welfare-Improving Patent Policy

Arbeitspapier

We construct a tractable general equilibrium model of cumulative innovation and growth, in which new ideas strictly improve upon frontier technologies, and productivity improvements are drawn in a stochastic manner. The presence of positive knowledge spillovers implies that the decentralized equilibrium features an allocation of labor to R&D activity that is strictly lower than the social planner's benchmark, which suggests a role for patent policy. We focus on a non-infringing inventive step requirement, which stipulates the minimum improvement to the best patented technology that a new idea needs to make for it to be patentable and non-infringing. We establish that there exists a finite required inventive step that maximizes the rate of innovation, as well as a separate optimal required inventive step that maximizes welfare, with the former being strictly greater than the latter. These conclusions are robust to allowing for the availability of an additional instrument in the form of patent length policy.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 4407

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives ; Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital ; Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity: General
• Thema: innovation ; growth ; patent policy

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Chor, Davin ; Lai, Edwin L.-C.
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (wo): Munich
• (wann): 2013

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/84143
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:44 MEZ