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 manufacturing. The analysis is conducted with panel data covering 112 countries. First, we show that IPR enforcement is U-shaped in a country's market size relative 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.