Ocorrerá no dia 27/04/2023, QUINTA-FEIRA, às 10h30min o Seminário de Pesquisa “Symbiotic Competition and Intellectual Property” na área de Economia Aplicada ministrado pelo Profº Rafael Guthmann (Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile)
Autores: Rafael Guthmann (Universidad Alberto Hurtado) e David M. Rahman (University of Minnesota)
Resumo: According to Nordhaus, the optimal life of a patent T ∗ trades off the “embarrassment” of monopoly with motivating innovation, given that imitators would otherwise copy inventions and, in competing with innovators, reduce their profit hence incentive to innovate. To test this argument, we develop an endogenous growth model with knowledge spillovers and imperfectly elastic labor supply. Innovators invent new varieties and earn monopolistically competitive rents during the life of a patent, but create deadweight losses in the labor market. When the patent expires, imitators copy innovators and competition ensues. Over time, firms continuously make follow-on “process” innovations and learn from each other, resulting in faster productivity growth relative to monopoly. Enough such innovations reverse the logic of patents: higher spillovers can imply a shorter T ∗ if, despite a diminution in product innovation, growth from process innovations matters more. Our calibration to the US economy offers T ∗ between 6 and 11 years, in contrast with the current global standard of 20. A counterfactual without spillovers yields T ∗ ≈ 34, suggesting that lost opportunities for productivity growth from competition matter substantially for the optimal life of a patent. We also find that optimal patent policy depends crucially on the distribution of spillovers across industries. As such, we argue for a macroeconomic approach to patent policy instead of restricting attention to individual industry estimates.