The use of economics to study law was pioneered by the Austrian School of Economics. The nineteenth century founders of the school believed that economics could contribute to understanding the spontaneous development of common law as well as the nature of legal rights. For this insightful...

How can property rights be protected and contracts be enforced in countries where the rule of law is ineffective or absent? How can firms from advanced market economies do business in such circumstances? In Lawlessness and Economics, Avinash Dixit examines the theory of private institutions that...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of firms’ internationalization on the relationship between intellectual property right (IPR) protection and their technological innovation. While recent studies provide a negative relationship between IPR protection and technological...

In this paper a firm’s R&D strategy is assumed to be endogenous and allowed to depend on both internal firm characteristics and external factors. Firms choose between two strategies, either they engage in R&D or abstain from own R&D and imitate the outcomes of innovators. This yields three...

This paper constructs a North–South quality-ladder model in which foreign direct investment (FDI) is determined by the endogenous location choice of firms, and examines analytically how strengthening patent protection in the South affects welfare in the South. Strengthening patent protection...

Since Schumpeter, it has been assumed that innovation typically plays a key role in competitiveness at firm, industry and national levels. This assumption has been applied to firms both in developed and developing countries. However, the innovative capacity and business environments of firms in...

This paper examines how intellectual property rights (IPR) protection affects innovation and foreign direct investment (FDI) using a North–South quality-ladder model incorporating the exogenous and costless imitation of technology and subsidy policies for both R&D and FDI. We show that for the...