I develop a general equilibrium model in which patent protection affects sequential innovation, original innovation, and imitation. Protection increases the cost of working around existing patents, but imposes costs disproportionately for innovators and imitators. Depending on these relative costs, protection can in theory increase or decrease markups, imitation, long-run growth, and aggregate productivity. Using data from several different sources, I calibrate the model and quantitatively assess the effects of patent protection in practice. I find that weakening protection in the U.S. would lead to no change in markups and imitation, no change in long-run growth, a more than doubling of the number of firms, and an increase in aggregate productivity of 11 percent.

中文翻译：

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量化专利保护对创新，模仿，增长和总体生产率的影响

我开发了一个通用的平衡模型，其中专利保护会影响顺序创新，原始创新和模仿。保护会增加使用现有专利的成本，但会给创新者和模仿者带来不成比例的成本。根据这些相对成本，理论上，保护可以增加或减少加价，模仿，长期增长和总生产率。我使用来自多个不同来源的数据，对模型进行了校准，并在实践中定量评估了专利保护的效果。我发现，削弱美国的保护不会导致加价和模仿的变化，长期增长的变化，公司数量增加一倍以上，总生产率提高11％。