The Effect of Intellectual Property Rights on Agricultural Productivity

MERCEDES CAMPI

Moscu

Conferencia; 9th Conference on Model-based Evidence on Innovation and Development (MEIDE); 2016

UNU-Merit

This paper explores how the strengthening of intellectual property (IP) protection affects agricultural productivity in a panel of countries for the period 1961-2010. Using an index of IP protection for plant varieties, we study the effect of stronger intellectual property rights (IPRs) on cereal yields and two dierent types of cereals: open-pollinated (wheat) and hybrid (maize). We found that the strengthening of IPRs has a positive effect on productivity of cereals for high- and low-income countries. But, we found no signicanteffect for middle-income countries. We also found that becoming a member of the TRIPS negatively aects cereal yields. Finally, we found evidence of the existence of non-linearities in the eect of IPRs on agricultural yields, which confirms a threshold eect of IPRs that also varies for countries of diferent income level. The findings support the hypothesis that country specicities are important in determining the effect of IPRs and imply that there is no unique system that ts all.