Investments in Pharmaceuticals Before and After TRIPS
研究TRIPS协议加强专利保护后，富裕国家研发投入增加，但发展中国家常见病的研发投资并未随之增长。
The TRIPS Agreement, which specifies minimum levels of intellectual property protection for countries in the WTO, has increased levels of patent protection around the world. Using variation across countries in the timing of patent laws and the severity of disease, we test the hypothesis that increased patent protection results in greater drug development effort. We find that patent protection in wealthy countries is associated with increases in R&D effort. However, the introduction of patents in developing countries has not been followed by greater R&D investment in the diseases that are most prevalent there. © 2012 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.