Abstract
What are the roles of institution on macroeconomics? How does protection of intellectual property right (IPR) affect innovation and economic growth? This dissertation provides some new insights to these questions in three chapters. The first chapter explores how governments should optimize their IPR policies in a globalized world. I construct a general dynamic model to capture innovation and imitation behavior and quantify it with US and China’s patent assignment and litigation data. I highlight the key opposite economic forces, which leads to a non-monotonic growth effect and illustrate the inter-temporal trade-off when government are optimizing innovation and imitation. These effects point to the conclusion that the current enforcement levels are above optimal, which causes significant welfare losses to both countries. The second chapter studies how government optimizes by balancing the two major channels of technology transfers: adoption and imitation. I construct an innovation model featuring these two channels. I find that imitation is positively related to technology gap between countries while adoption exhibits an inverted-U-shaped relationship. Also, the comparative statics analysis points out that strengthening IPR protection in developing countries and increasing adopter’s bargaining power are both long-run growth-promoting. The third chapter explores the relationship among human capital, regime transition, and economic prosperity. I build an endogenous growth framework with human capital accumulation and a revolution game to study different patterns of political regime transition. The ruler optimizes their tax income subject to the constraint of being revolted and the workers accumulates human capital, which increases their chance of a successful revolution. The framework could replicate the dynamics of various patterns of regime switching and economic development and shows that the key determinants of the path is the allocation of human capital endowment.
Committee Chair
Yongseok Shin
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Author's Department
Economics
Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
5-7-2024
Language
English (en)
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7936/9qen-9a78
Author's ORCID
0000-0002-1733-6833
Recommended Citation
Lam, Chak Hong Leo, "Essays on Institutions, Innovations, and Macroeconomics" (2024). Arts & Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 3035.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.7936/9qen-9a78