Politico-Historical Contingencies, Intellectual Property Rights, and Economic Performance Across Countries: A Simultaneous Equation System Perspective

What is it about?

It is well known that some countries provide ‘stronger’ intellectual property protections than others. However the reasons behind the variation in the level of their IPR protection is not well known. Is it only to boost investment and economic performances? How do bilateral and multilateral trade treaties influence IPR laws? How IPR is influenced by the ‘strength’ of physical property rights and legal origins and structure of a country? How political history shapes IPR laws of a country? What are the implications of ‘stronger’ IPR laws for human development? The paper attempts to discuss some of these issues using a simultaneous equation regression framework. This framework acknowledges the two-way interaction between IPR, other related institutions and the various measures of economic performance, and, thereby, provides a systemic understanding of IPR, which is rare in the existing literature.

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