Trade-Ralated Intellectual Property Protection And Economic Growth

In the late 1980~th,a book named 《the limit to growth》 is very popular in China, which claims that as the continuous growth of population and economy in the world, essential resource such as forest, mine and land would be exhausted, therefore, sustainable growth is impossible. This note corresponds with the pessimistic predict in "Marlsars' trap", however, all of these theories are false in opinion of modern economists, since modern economic growth is not dependent on factor input but on the more output within a given factor input, which stems from human capital or improvement in scientific technology, in sum, from knowledge. Since knowledge is the ultimate resource of economic growth, the institution of intellectual property right protection is decisive to both national and worldwide economic growth. This dissertation focuses on the relationship between economic growth and intellectual property right especially trade-related intellectual property right protection.By reviewing the present literature about trade and growth, we can conclude that the primary reasons why trade accelerates economic lie in several respects: the advancement of productivity owing to integration effects or economic of scale, the evolution of dynamic comparative advantage thanks to learning by doing, and the successive accumulation of human capital it brings about as well as multinational spread of technological knowledge. The last one is most significant in all of factor above mentioned. Thus it can be seen that the multinational circulation of thought is the real reason why trade promotes growth and in actuality, the viewpoint that a country benefits from static comparative advantage trade brings only involves level effects but without growth effects.Originating in Britain in 17th century, intellectual property right protection exerts a quite positive effect at that time as an institutional arrangement to encourage invention and innovation. In theory, intellectual property right protection confronts a dilemma that non-protection or too loose protection would lead to inadequacy of innovation in private economy while too tight protection would empower the monopoly of patent-holder. The optimum protection level is to compromise between these two extremes. The obviously difficulty is that the optimum protections level is different in countries in different phasesof economic development. Consequently, the agreement concerning trade-related intellectual property protection would arise benefit conflict between developed countries and developing ones if it requires the same protection standard.The theoretical study in this dissertation illustrates that if trade occurs between developed countries, tight protection would accelerate growth rate of world economy undoubtedly, as it would stimulate more innovation in enterprise, deepening of division of labor, and attract more human capital into new knowledge production in each country, avoiding imitation and duplication. If trade occurs between developed countries and developing countries, though tight protection will bring welfare loss to developing countries, it is worthwhile if it could induce more transfer of technology knowledge from developed countries. On the basis of its economic situation, developing countries could stimulate more FDI and more direct transfer of technology knowledge from developed countries by continuously reinforcing its intellectual property protection. At last, if too much imitation in developing countries leads to inadequacy of motive for innovation in enterprise in developed countries, theoretically, it would have a positive effect on world economic growth to levy tariff on the imitative product from developing countries.By positive analysis, this dissertation reaches a basic conclusion that more open to world the economy is, more powerfully the intellectual property protection will promote economy growth. The reason behind the basic conclusion may be that more open to world the economy is, more complete the competition will become, more forcefully the intellectual property protection will stimulate innovation, less loss in efficiency due to monopoly bringing about.From the first establishment in 1980th, institution of intellectual property protection has made a great progress in China, and it was accelerating to meet the demand of TRIPs agreement before entering WTO. Now, the system of intellectual property protection in China has satisfied the TRIPs in many respects while it falls short mainly on the execution of law. In addition, there are great flaws in patent institution in china compared to that in developed countries and the primary problem is less application of patent-holders. Many patents held by foreigners will awfully restrict the economic development, and also reveal the weak patent consciousness of enterprises and individuals. Besides, by present statistics in China, the research on the before-mentioned theory draws a conclusion that developing countries could induce more FDI from...