Intellectual property regimes and wage inequality

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bhattacharya, Sourav; Chakraborty, Pavel; Chatterjee, Chirantan
• 署名单位: Indian Institute of Management (IIM System); Indian Institute of Management Calcutta; Lancaster University; University of Sussex; Stanford University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102709
• 发表日期: 2022
• 关键词: Intellectual property regimes; wage inequality; High-tech and low-tech firms; Managerial compensation; “ Snail-shape” Patent race

摘要

We use The Patents (Amendment) Act, 2002 in India as a quasi-natural experiment to identify the causal effect of higher incentives for innovation on a firm's compensation structure. We find that stronger intellectual property (IP) protection has a sharper impact on the demand for managerial skill for technologically advanced firms. Firms that were a-priori above the industry median (in terms of technology adoption, more so for R&D expenditure) witness a rise in the share of managerial compensation by 1.3%-8.3% higher than the rest. This effect is completely driven by firms between 5-8th decile with no effect on firms below the median or at the very top of the technological ladder. This observed snail-shape in the firms' response to the IP shock is rationalized in a model where firms within an industry compete for patents by investing in managerial inputs. The observed increase in wage inequality can partly be attributed to a stronger performance pay for high-tech firms. Associatedly, high-tech firms invested more in technology adoption, started to produce more product varieties at higher quality, and filed for more product patent claims.