Optimal Patent Protection in a Two-Sector Economy

This article addresses the issue of optimal patent protection in an economy with a downstream and an upstream sector. The key insight is that higher patent protection in the downstream sector raises the incentives of agents to do R&D in that sector but discourages innovation in the upstream sector because of a market size effect. Hence, higher patent protection in the upstream sector accelerates growth whereas higher patent protection in the downstream sector slows it down. If some innovation is socially desirable, optimal patent protection is necessarily higher in the upstream than in the downstream sector.     

Fragmentation, Engel's Law, and Learning

This paper outlines the conditions under which trade is beneficial for a developing country's growth. A developing country suffers from two disadvantages: low income and a comparative disadvantage in the production of modern manufactured goods—goods which allow a high rate of human capital accumulation through learning by doing. Low income together with Engel's law imply that developing countries consume and produce very few modern goods in autarky and hence grow slowly. With international fragmentation of production, a developing country may find comparative advantage in the production of some stages of modern goods despite an absence of comparative advantage in the production of modern goods under “100% local content.” More resources can then be allocated to the modern goods sector leading to greater learning externalities and hence growth under free trade than in autarky.     

Financing decisions of firms and central bank policy

This paper aims to explain why unhedged foreign borrowing by South East Asian corporations rose sharply during the few years prior to the crisis despite little change in fundamentals. We show that decisions of firms and decisions of the central bank are complementary. Consequently, a small shock to fundamentals may have a large and permanent impact on the equilibrium composition of firms’ borrowing.     

Learning by doing, trade in capital goods and growth

This paper aims at reconciling theoretical models of endogenous growth with the empirical evidence on trade and growth. In particular, we show that the conventional wisdom according to which trade is growth-impairing for a country with comparative advantage in goods with limited opportunities for learning fails to hold when the imported good is a capital good. The intuition is that the country gains access to cheaper capital goods, which raises investment, output per worker and learning by doing.     

Knowledge diffusion, input supplier's technological effort and technology transfer via vertical relationships

This paper studies the effect of knowledge diffusion on the incentives for developed countries' (DC) firms to undertake costly technology transfer to their less developed countries' (LDC) suppliers whose cost of production varies inversely with their technological effort. When the incumbent supplier's cost of improving efficiency is high, diffusion of knowledge to other potential input producers encourages technology transfer, as it increases upstream competition. However, and in sharp contrast to existing literature, when technological effort is less costly, knowledge diffusion discourages technology transfer by reducing the incumbent supplier's technological effort.