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More Thoughts on Patents and Copyrights

Since my comments on Greg Mankiw's defense of the one percent prompted so much response, I thought I should add some clarification on the treatment of patents and copyrights. First off, my main point is that these are government policies designed to meet a public purpose (i.e. promoting innovation and creative work), not natural rights that are an end in themselves. In this sense altering them does not raise questions of rights as would restricting the freedom of speech or assembly.

Those who like to point to the constitutional origin of these forms of property should note where patents and copyrights appear in the constitution. They are listed as a power of Congress along with other powers, like the power to tax. They do not appear in the Bill of Rights where rights of individuals are explicitly described.

The constitution authorizes Congress to create monopolies for limited periods of time "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." In this sense, patents and copyrights are explicitly linked to a public purpose. If it were determined that patents and copyrights are not the most efficient means for promoting innovation and creative work, and therefore Congress decided to stop authorizing these monopolies, individuals would have no more constitutional basis for complaint than if Congress decided that it didn't need to raise taxes.

Once we recognize that patents and copyrights are policies to promote innovation and creative work then the question is whether they are best policy and if so, are they best structured now for this purpose. Neither assumption is obvious and I would argue that the latter is almost certainly not true.

In terms of whether these are the best policies, in my earlier post I was simply pointing out that alternative mechanisms already exist and support a great deal of work. I actually didn't advocate any specific policy, but I have written on alternatives to both. Here's a discussion of alternatives to patent supported drug research and here is a proposal modeled after the tax deduction for charitable contributions for supporting creative work. (By the way, the folks who were arguing for the merits of markets over central planning are in the wrong place. You were looking for Joe Stalin's blog, there is no proposal for central planning in my work.) 

Dean Baker / June 25, 2013

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Teaching Robert Samuelson About Supply and Demand

Last week we had to teach Robert Samuelson about inflation. He noted that the wealth of households was back to its pre-recession level, but spending was not. This led him to think that the wealth effect no longer applied. However, when we adjusted the data for inflation and then brought in Mr. Arithmetic it turned out that people were spending more than would be predicted by the wealth effect, not less.

This week it looks like we have to teach Mr. Samuelson about supply and demand. His column is a warning that "cheap money" (e.g. the quantitative easing and low interest rate policy pursued by the Fed) may do more harm than good. This comes in the context of the drop in world stock markets following Ben Bernanke's indication of a pullback from these policies.

Never mind that the drop in world stock markets is exactly what would be predicted if cheap money actually was helping the economy (in that case, the pullback would be expected to lead to lower growth and likely lower profits, therefore we would expect to see lower stock prices), let's deal with the rest of his story. The basic problem in the column is an inability to distinguish clearly between supply and demand.

This first comes up when he complains that in spite of cheap money:

"the speed of the U.S. recovery (about 2 percent annually) is roughly half the average of all recoveries from 1960 to 2007. As for the global economy, it grew 2.5 percent in 2012, down from the 3.7 percent average from 2003 to 2007, says IHS Global Insight."

This one is easily explained by lack of demand. Housing bubbles in the United States and elsewhere had been driving the economy prior to the downturn. Those bubbles have mostly burst, although Canada, Australia, and the UK have seen bubbles reemerge. The fact that the downturn was caused by a collapsed bubble instead of the Fed raising interest rates meant that the recovery would be much slower and more difficult than in prior recessions. There was no easy way to replace the consumption and construction demand created by these bubbles. Some of us were yelling this at the top of our lungs back at the start of the recession, but apparently Samuelson didn't hear us and is therefore surprised by the weakness of the recovery.

Dean Baker / June 24, 2013

Article Artículo

Tyler Cowen Goes Off the Track on China's Aging

Tyler Cowen has an interesting piece on the problems facing developing countries going forward. As he notes, these will be different in the future than they were in the past. However the piece is strange due to one of the items it mentions, the aging of the population, and one it leaves out, intellectual property claims. (Btw, Cowen references a column by Dani Rodrick as raising the issue of new problems confronting developing countries. Rodrick does not mention aging in his list of concerns.)

On the former point, Cowen seems determined to apply the Peter Peterson financed obsession with cutting Social Security and Medicare to the whole world. He gives us the bad news:

"It is less well known that fertility rates in much of the Middle East and North Africa are also falling rapidly. In Iran, for example, it is now estimated at 1.86 per woman, which over time would mean that families are not replenishing themselves. And shrinking and older populations, of course, limit future economic growth."

Wow, back when I learned economics we cared about per capita income, not growth per se. Most people would think that Denmark is better off than Bangladesh, even though Bangladesh has a far higher GDP. Fewer people means fewer demands on resources of all types and less greenhouse gas emissions. I suppose Cowen is worried that the beaches will be less crowded and there will be smaller traffic jams. That prospect is not likely to be a major concern for most people in the developing world.

Cowen also gives us the bad news about China:

"Finally, many lower-income countries will be old before they are rich. China’s population, for example, is aging rapidly, given the government’s one-child policy and the decline in birthrates that accompanies rising income."

Let's think about this one for a moment. China has seen unprecedented growth in per capita income over the last three decades. Per capita GDP has risen by a factor of 13. This swamps the growth in almost every other developing country. While aging can impose some burden on the working population, it will not prevent both workers and retirees from enjoying much higher living standards than they did in the recent past.

Dean Baker / June 23, 2013