Intellectual Property Rights Protection and Trade: An Empirical Analysis

The paper proposes an empirical analysis of the determinants of the adoption of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and their impact on innovation in manufac- turing. The analysis is conducted with panel data covering 112 countries. First we show that IPR protection is U-shaped with respect to a country’s market size and inverse-U-shaped with respect to the aggregated market size of its trade partners. Second, reinforcing IPR protection reduces on-the-frontier and inside-the-frontier innovation in developing countries, without necessarily increasing innovation at the global level