Michele Boldrin on Intellectual Property

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🗓️ 18 May 2009

⏱️ 80 minutes

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Summary

Michele Boldrin of Washington University in St. Louis talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about intellectual property and Boldrin's book, co-written with David Levine, Against Intellectual Monopoly. 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. Boldrin reviews some of that evidence and talks about the nature of competition.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	other information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you.
0:36.7	Today is May 7th and my guest today is Michele Bouldrin. The Joseph Gibson Hoyt Distinguished
0:44.6	Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. His latest book,
0:49.6	co-authored with David Levine, is Against Intellectual Monopoly. Michele, welcome to Econ Talk.
0:56.0	I, Russell, and thanks for having me here at the pleasure.
0:59.6	Our topic today are the ideas in your book and the general issue of what is called intellectual
1:04.6	property. I would say that many, maybe most economists believe that invention and ideas,
1:10.6	so-called intellectual property, they need to be protected by patents and copyright to give
1:15.9	people the incentives to produce them. I'd like to hear from you that standard argument
1:22.1	that I was taught and believed and why you disagree with it.
1:26.6	Yes, yes. Well, the argument we disagree with is basically the argument that exists
1:35.8	such a thing as intellectual property. There is something that is meaningful and you could
1:44.2	call the property of ideas. We think property rights should be clearly defined and protected,
1:51.8	I think, that is essential for markets to work and economics isn't to work at large.
1:57.4	We just find that this particular one is of the same class as tariffs and exclusive
2:04.4	rights and monopoly rights, which one could concord that property as well and not of the
2:10.4	first type. As such, they are overall inefficient. Without exceptions, we can go through the
2:16.1	exception. We can go through the special cases, as usual. But as a general principle,
	...

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