International patent protection and trade: Transaction-level evidence

International Patent Harmonization and Trade Balance of Patent Rights

The economic implications of international patent harmonization have attracted little empirical scrutiny. Based on patent application and renewal data in major European countries since the early 1980s, this paper examines the empirical relationship between international patenting, R&D, and “trade flows” of patent rights across national borders. The analysis reveals a substantial patent “trade i...

International Trade and Job Polarization: Evidence at the Worker Level∗

This paper examines the role of international trade for job polarization, the phenomenon in which employment for highand low-wage occupations increases but mid-wage occupations decline. With employer-employee matched data on virtually all workers and firms in Denmark between 1999 and 2009, we use instrumentalvariables techniques and a quasi-natural experiment to show that import competition is ...

Declining Distance Effects in International Trade: Some Country-Level Evidence

Technical progress can be expected to reduce transport costs over time, yet most studies of bilateral trade based on the gravity model find distance effects to be increasing rather than decreasing. We investigate countries’ openness to international trade (the ratio of exports plus imports to GDP). We find that trade decreases with geographical remoteness, land area, and lack of access to the s...

Proposed trade agreement could increase patent protection for pharmaceuticals.

Nationalism and International Trade: Theory and Evidence∗

Nationalism is important in shaping the politics of every country throughout the world, but the economic rationale underlying nationalism remains unclear. This paper provides a framework for analyzing nationalistic sentiments, including asserted supremacy of national interests, xenophobia, state sovereignty, and militarization. The level of nationalistic sentiments varies by the relative import...