Do National Patent Laws Stimulate Domestic Innovation in a Global Patenting Environment? A Cross-Country Analysis of Pharmaceutical Patent Protection, 1978–2002
分析1978-2002年间26个建立药品专利法的国家，发现国家专利保护本身并未刺激国内创新，但在经济发展、教育水平和经济自由度较高的国家，国内创新加速，且存在最优知识产权保护水平。
This paper evaluates the effects of patent protection on pharmaceutical innovations for 26 countries that established pharmaceutical patent laws during 1978-2002. Controlling for country characteristics through matched sampling techniques to establish two proper comparison sets among 92 sampled countries and through country-pair fixed-effects regressions, this study yields robust results. National patent protection alone does not stimulate domestic innovation, as estimated by changes in citation-weighted U.S. patent awards, domestic R&D, and pharmaceutical industry exports. However, domestic innovation accelerates in countries with higher levels of economic development, educational attainment, and economic freedom. Additionally, there appears to be an optimal level of intellectual property rights regulation above which further enhancement reduces innovative activities. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.