Lynne Kiesling
I’ve had a lovely morning catching up on some of Russ Roberts’ EconTalk podcasts. In particular, I listened back-to-back to Michele Boldrin discussing intellectual property and Paul Romer discussing growth, including intellectual property institutions, with Russ.
As the show notes for the Boldrin podcast note, “Boldrin argues that copyright and patent are used by the politically powerful to maintain monopoly profits. He argues that the incentive effects that have been used to justify copyright and patents are exaggerated–few examples from history suggest that the temporary and not-so-temporary monopoly power from copyright and patents were necessary to induce innovation.” Listening to these two podcasts together provide an illuminating overview of the complicated economics of copyright.