Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/331343 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
LEM Working Paper Series No. 2025/26
Publisher: 
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Pisa
Abstract: 
This paper identifies the dichotomous role (bright and dark sides) of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection on labor productivity among highly innovative globalised firms. The role of appropriability conditions-such as IPR protection- as "Schumpeterian" incentive to innovation has been largely explored in the em- pirical literature. In this paper, we contribute to this strand explore the role of appropriability conditions on firm labor productivity under different configurations of R&D activities in highly globalized companies. In line with the literature, we show that labor, capital and R&D investments lead to productivity gains, and that the strength of the patent system the firm is embedded into is positively linked to the firm's labor productivity too. We call this the 'bright side' of IPR. However, stronger intellectual property rights might have a detrimental effect on the R&D re- turns, which appear to be maximized around the median level of IPR protection. In other words, too much protection might actually reduce R&D returns, again in line with the "Schumpeterian prediction". Then, we call this the 'dark side' of IPR. To our knowledge, this is the first paper highlighting such dichotomy (bright and dark sides of IPR) on a purpose-built high-quality database of globalized firms, which tend to be the most innovative firms in the world.
Subjects: 
panel data
appropriability
productivity
JEL: 
C23
O34
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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