Income per capita differences have increased dramatically over the last fifty years. Many economists seem to recognize knowledge differences as the main factor in this worldwide economic performance divergence. Developing countries suffer significantly from lagging labour productivity and...

This paper examines how stronger intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in the south affects the processes of R&D investment, technology transfer and skill accumulation. It finds that stronger IPR protection has only a temporary impact on the innovation rate while it has a negative impact...