Intellectual Property Rights and Foreign Direct Investment: A Welfare Analysis

This paper examines how intellectual property rights (IPR) protection affects innovation and foreign direct investment (FDI) using a North-South quality-ladder model incorporat- ing the exogenous and costless imitation of technology and subsidy policies for both R&D and FDI. We show that for the interior steady state to be stable, either R&D or FDI sub- sidy rates must be positive in the costless imitation model. Our findings also indicate that strengthening IPR protection promotes both innovation and FDI. Moreover, a strengthen- ing of IPR protection can also improve welfare if the initial IPR protection in the South is weak.