The analysis of the varying effects of global intellectual property rights policies in developed and developing countries: The North-South-East model

This dissertation examines the varying effects of intellectual property rights (IPR) on developed and developing countries. Although the mainstream global approach on IPR is to protect them as tightly as possible, the observable facts reveal that the protection of intellectual property may hurt the technology production sectors in developing world. Within this scope, this study investigates how the effects of intellectual property protection differ among the countries. The first chapter consists of some fundamentals on IPR and an extensive related literature review. Since imitation is an important step for innovation and technological development, the second chapter mainly focuses on imitation-type technology production and tries to describe the global economic trade-offs arising from IPR policies by building a three-pole global economy model which we denominate as "the North-South-East Model". The simulation results of the theoretical model reveal firstly that the northern region which represents the developed countries, benefits from tighter protection of IPR in any case. Secondly, the protection of IPR has dissimilar impacts within developing world and a conflict of interest appears between southern and eastern regions which represent developing countries with idiosyncratic technological potentials. In the third chapter, the issue was empirically tackled. The results show that developed countries benefit from tighter IPR policies while developing countries are hurt by them. By compiling the empirical findings with the inferences of the simulation exercise, it is possible to assert that stronger IPR protections retard the technological progress of developing world by reducing both the innovation and imitation type technological productions. Keywords: Intellectual Property Rights, Imitation, Innovation