Intellectual Property Rights and Foreign Technology Licensing in Developing Countries: An Empirical Investigation
本文研究加强知识产权保护是否促进发展中国家技术转移。基于42个发展中国家企业样本，发现加强保护使关联企业许可外国技术的概率提高65%，但对非关联企业无显著影响；且该效应仅在上中等收入国家显著。
This paper addresses the question of whether expanded and strengthened protection of intellectual property (IP) rights fosters technology transfer to developing countries, which is one of the premises of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. Cross-sectional analysis of a representative sample of firms operating in 42 developing economies indicates that going from no IP protection to maximum IP protection is associated with a 65% increase in the predicted probability of licensing foreign technology for the subpopulation of affiliated firms, whereas the predicted probability is not significantly different from zero for unaffiliated firms. We also find evidence that the environment in which a firm operates moderates the relationship of IP protection and firm-level technology licensing: although going from no IP protection to maximum IP protection is associated with a 47% increase in the predicted probability of licensing foreign technology for firms operating in upper-middle-income countries, there is at best no significant correlation for firms operating in lower-middle-income and low-income countries.