Tariff barriers and the protection of intellectual property in the global economy
通过一个两国模型研究关税壁垒如何影响全球专利保护的福利效果，发现只有在关税足够低时，专利政策的国民待遇协调才可取；若各国征收最优关税，国民待遇反而降低全球福利。
This paper develops a simple two-country model of quality-improving innovation to study the role tariff barriers play in shaping the welfare impact of global patent protection. We show that international patent policy coordination via national treatment is desirable only if tariff barriers between countries are sufficiently low. Furthermore, if countries are free to impose their optimal tariffs on one another, requiring national treatment in patent protection unambiguously lowers world welfare. Hence, constraining tariffs helps pave the way for international coordination over patent protection. This insight provides a potential rationale for the historical sequencing of policy reforms observed in the global trading system: multilateral rules on intellectual property were adopted only after decades of trade negotiations had succeeded in substantially reducing global tariffs.