The Role of Intellectual Property Rights on Economic Growth: A Comparison of G7 and D8 Countries

Intellectual Property Rights has an important role on the long-run economic growth of the countries. So, in recent years, the international institutions likes World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) have recommended their members, the establishments and the reinforcement of this determinant factor in their economic policies. This research deals with this question that whether the intellectual property rights can explain the difference between growth rates of developing and developed countries? For this purpose, we use data of 15 countries for the period of 1975-2005 that is divided in two groups of developed countries (G7) and developing countries (D8); and to analyze the data, the econometric panel data approach is applied. The results show that the intellectual property rights impact on economic growth depends on the degree of economic development of the concerned countries. That is, the effect of intellectual property rights on economic growth, in developed countries (G7) is higher than in developing countries (D8).