| Abstract: | Intellectual property treaties create two types of obligations:for national treatment of foreign inventors and for certainharmonized protections. I investigate both the incentive tojoin such treaties and the incentive to harmonize. As comparedto an equilibrium in which the countries' policy makers makeindependent choices, harmonization will generally strengthenprotections. This analysis recognizes that public sponsorshipis sometimes an efficient alternative to intellectual property.However, there are no institutions to harmonize public spending,and there are no international mechanisms to repatriate thespillovers it generates. As a consequence, there may be toolittle public sponsorship and too much intellectual property.A country's inclination to strengthen harmonized protectionswill depend both on its innovativeness (positively) and on thesize of its domestic market (negatively). |
