Patent Laws, Product Life-Cycle Lengths, and Multinational Activity
研究了专利法如何影响跨国公司的制造选址决策，发现强专利法吸引跨国活动仅在产品生命周期较长的行业，而短周期行业则不受影响。
Do intellectual property rights influence multinationals' manufacturing location decisions? My theoretical model indicates that countries with strong patent laws attract multinational activity, but only in sectors with relatively long product life cycles. By contrast, firms with short life-cycle technologies are insensitive, because offshore imitation is less likely to succeed before obsolescence. I document strong empirical regularities consistent with the model using a panel dataset on the global operations of US-based multinational firms and a new measure of product obsolescence. Moreover, my identification strategy allows me to isolate the causal effect of patent laws on multinational activity.