强化知识产权保护与南北双赢

Strengthening Intellectual Property Rights Protection as a North-South Win-Win Game

传统观点认为,强知识产权保护有利于北方国家而有损于南方国家。本文构建一个两期技术转移模型,说明在一定条件下,南方国家会自愿加强知识产权保护,并实现南北双赢。假设北方企业拥有两种技术,即传统技术和先进技术。若南方的知识产权保护太弱,北方企业可能会因为害怕被模仿而策略性延迟引入先进技术,导致南方国家受损。此时,南方政府将有积极性自愿加强知识产权保护以防止北方企业采用延迟策略,而模型分析表明,最优的知识产权保护力度是南方企业模仿能力的倒U型函数。进一步,如果是否拥有先进技术是北方企业的私人信息,南方政府将更不愿意采用严格的知识产权保护制度,因而消除信息不对称有利于南方国家自愿强化知识产权保护。

Intellectual property rights protection(IPP)attracts spotlight in the recent trade frictions between China and the U.S.conventional wisdom holds that strengthening IPP in countries of the South will benefit countries of the North which possesses novel technology at the expense of the South which usually imitates.We challenge this kind of zero-sum-game narratives by building up a two-period North-South technology transfer model,in which strengthening IPP can be a win-win game for both countries under some conditions.Furthermore,we show that the private information of firms in the North regarding technology reserve is an important driving force for the governments in the South to take weak IPP.Therefore,if firms in the North can eliminate or alleviate asymmetric information by disclosure,the governments in the South will have more incentive to strengthen IPP.We consider a two-period game of North-South technology transfer.There are three players in the game:the government in the South,a firm in the South and a firm in the North.Each firm aims to maximize its own profit,and the government in the South is concerned with the total social welfare of countries of the South.The firm in the North has two possible types,one with only traditional technology but the other with both traditional and novel technologies.We assume that the government in the South is always unsure of the type of firms in the North when making its IPP policy.Therefore,we only focus on possible inter-firm asymmetric information,which means that the firm in the North knows its own type while the firm in the South only knows the distribution of the firm in the North.The timing of the game is as follows:in the first period,the government in the South first chooses its IPP level,then the firm in the North decides which type of technology to introduce to the market in the South,and the firm in the South decides whether to imitate technology of the firm in the North or not.In the second period,the firm in the North that has novel technology but introduces traditional technology in the first period should decide whether to further introduce novel technology which,once introduced,will completely replace the traditional one.In case of technology upgrading,the firm in the South should decide whether to imitate the novel technology.We first discuss the benchmark of symmetric information.Obviously,if the firm in the North only has traditional technology,weak IPP is optimal for the government in the South.However,the problem will be more complicated if the firm in the North still has novel technology.The subtle thing is that facing weak IPP,the firm in the North may have an incentive to introduce traditional technology in the first period to guarantee its monopoly profit in the second period,and no novel technology introduced in the first period means welfare loss to the South.In this case,it is optimal for the government in the South to strengthen its IPP to increase the imitation cost of the firm in the South,which encourages the firm in the North to introduce the novel technology immediately in the first period.We show that the optimal IPP policy has a quasi-inverted-U shape relationship with the imitation ability of the country of the North.Now we consider the case of asymmetric information.While our main conclusions still hold,there is an important difference,i.e.,the government in the South will be less likely to take strong IPP policies.Intuitively,after observing traditional technology in the first period,the firm in the South is still not sure about the type of the firm in the North,so the replacement threat of the firm in the North with novel technology becomes smaller and hence the government in the South will have less incentive to strengthen IPP.Therefore,we argue that the private information of the firm in the North with respect to its technology reserve is an important driving force for weak IPP policy in the South.Correspondingly,if the firm in the North eliminates or alleviates asymmetric information by proactive disclosure,the government in the South will be more likely to strengthen its IPP policy.It is long controversial whether enhancing IPP in developing countries stimulates international technology transfer and its subsequent welfare impacts.Our analysis sheds new light on these issues.We show that in absence of indigenous innovation,i.e.,even if the firm in the South is assumed to be a mere imitator,it is still possible to achieve a win-win game for international technology transfer by strengthening IPP.In addition,while the existing literature usually discusses how exogeneous IPP affects international technology transfer strategy,we endogenize IPP of countries of the South and,to our limited knowledge,first emphasize the important role of information asymmetry through the dynamic game framework.Finally,our results indicate that the optimal IPP policy of the country of the South depends crucially on the imitation ability of the firm in the South,which in turn depends on the economic development level of the country of the South.Therefore,our analysis implies that developing countries should fine-tune their IPP policies according to their economic development stages.