Impact of Strengthening Intellectual Property Rights Regime on Income Inequality: An Econometric Analysis

This paper examines the impact of strengthening Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) on within-country income inequality for a cross-section of 65 developed and developing countries for the time period 1995- 2009. The results indicate that strengthening of IPRs has led to an increase in income inequality in WTO member developing countries after they started modifying their national IPR regimes to conform to the TRIPs requirements. IPRs tend to raise income inequality by generating a more skewed distribution of wages. Moreover, the effect on inequality is more pronounced for developing countries that are experiencing higher per capita GDP growth rates. As for the developed countries included in the sample, the analysis seems to suggest that IPRs have led to a decline in income inequality over the study period.