Intellectual property and development : lessons from recent economic research / edited by Carsten Fink and Keith E. Maskus. [0821357727 (pbk.) ] Washington, DC : A copublication of the World Bank and Oxford University Press, New York, c2005.
Call#: Van Pelt Library K1401 .I5528 2005

 

   This book, which is a compilation of essays, constitutes an in depth economic analysis of how intellectual property rights effect development within an economy. The final essay focuses on China and is entitled “Intellectual Property Rights and Economic Development in China.” The essay is well written, and the economic concepts are simply described.
   The essay discusses the growth of China’s economy through an economic analysis of intellectual property rights and how they affect business and investment. The first half of the essay presents the standard economic theory for strengthening intellectual property rights in developing economies and reviews the benefits derived from strict enforcement of intellectual property rights. However, this review is balanced by a discussion of reasons why the government of a developing economy would not want to enact strict enforcement of IPRs.
   The second half of the essay deals specifically with China. The authors, Maskus, Dougherty, and Mertha use three sections to prove that China is making significant progress in strengthening IPR enforcement, but the point out that China also has a number of problems that must be addressed before it can reach an acceptable state of IPR protection. The first of these sections is a discussion of interviews held with lawyers, scholars, businessmen, and policy makers in China. The next section evaluates statistics on trademarks and patents in China. The final section looks at “data on technology development and inputs, along with some estimated effects on Chinese industrial productivity.” The authors conclude that

"Overall, our analysis suggests that the IPR situation for invention and innovation is improving in China but that there are still significant problems associated with inadequate enforcement, regional income differences, insufficient incentives for commercialization of the results of R&D, and relatively low levels of research effort."

This essay is extremely helpful in determining the state of IPRs in China through the lens of economics although it presents the material in a way that is biased toward the assumption that all developing economies should have strong IPRs. Therefore, this book comprises an important opposition to the thesis of gradual improvement in China's IPRs but provides valuable reasons why a developing country would want a weaker IPR regime, which hence supports the assertion for China’s gradual development.