Industrial and intellectual property rights in the Uruguay round and beyond

The current Uruguay Round of negotiations in GATT is considering the issues of industrial and intellectual property rights (IIPRs), trade in services and direct foreign investment. Although these issues are not linked conceptually, they have come to be integrated in a single policy initiative in which the US government is particularly active. The major reason for targetting IIPRs for reform is that there are major changes in technology which render the inherited regime anachronistic. This article considers these changes in technology, describes the implications for property rights and discusses the current policy negotiations in GATT. It concludes by pointing to the key role being played by the USA and questions whether this is likely to endure given the undermining of the technologically dominant position of the US economy

Promoting regional economic growth in Greece by investing in public infrastructure

The role of public infrastructure capital in the development process, either at national or at regional levels, was a relatively neglected area of research until recently. The innovatory work of Aschauer, and the ensuing debate between himself, Munnell, and Holtz-Eakin regarding the role of infrastructure in the development process in the USA, has spawned much interest in the issue. The authors aim to assess the impact of public capital on Greek manufacturing industries, especially focused at the regional scale. Capital stocks were estimated for the private and public sectors and Cobb-Douglas production functions were used in the analytical framework. The results suggest that the role of private capital in economic development in recent times has been marginal, as private investment has declined, whereas the role of labour and public capital has been both positive and significant. The authors segregate public capital into 'productive' and 'social' infrastructure; they argue that when productive infrastructure makes a positive contribution to production output, the impact of social infrastructure is insignificant and/or negative in most cases. The network effects of infrastructure are also estimated