文档介绍：CONTRACTS, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
RIGHTS, AND MULTINATIONAL
INVESTMENT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
James R. Markusen
Working Paper 6448
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES
CONTRACTS, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
RIGHTS, AND MULTINATIONAL
INVESTMENT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
James R. Markusen
Working Paper 6448
ers/w6448
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02 1 38
March 1998
This work has been supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation to the National
Bureau of Economic Research. Any opinions expressed are those of the author and not those of the
National Bureau of Economic Research.
O 1998 by James R. Markusen. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two
paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including O notice,
is given to the source.
Contracts, Intellectual Property Rights,
and Multinational Investment in Developing Countries
James R. Markusen
NBER Working Paper No. 6448
March 1998
JEL Nos. F 12, F23
ABSTRACT
The institution and enforcement of property rights and contracts have been an important
policy issue for the developing countries, the transition economies, and the developed countries in
the 1990s. This has led to the development of a literature on technology transfer and how property
rights might affect such transfers and host-country welfare. Much of this literature is non-strategic,
with large numbers of "northern" innovative firms and "southern" imitators, and focusses on
endogenous R&D and imitation levels. This paper takes a different plementary approach,
developing a strategic model in which local managers learn the multinational's technology and can
defect to start a rival firm. If contract enforcement leads the MNE to shift from exporting to
producing inside the host country, both the host country and the MNE are better off. If the MNE had
established a subsidiary prior