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Some Bad News Is Good News for Foreign Investors: The Case of Intellectual Property Rights Infringement in China
Author(s) -
Kim Icksoo,
Hong Eunsuk,
Shin Jong Kook,
Sun Laixiang
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
thunderbird international business review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.553
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1520-6874
pISSN - 1096-4762
DOI - 10.1002/tie.21782
Subject(s) - intellectual property , china , enforcement , foreign direct investment , business , government (linguistics) , context (archaeology) , attractiveness , international trade , international economics , economics , law , political science , psychology , paleontology , philosophy , linguistics , psychoanalysis , biology
Despite China's attractiveness to foreign investors, intellectual property rights ( IPR ) protection in China has not caught up with international standards. This research aims to quantify the relationships between IPR violations, government effectiveness, and foreign direct investment ( FDI ) inflows in the context of China. Our econometric modeling and estimation based on provincial level data over 2002‐2012 show that in an early development stage of law and regulatory enforcement, the bad news of a rising number of IPR dispute cases signals the good news of an improvement in law and regulatory enforcement, which encourages IPR owners to raise legal cases. By contrast, in the later development stage, when law and regulatory enforcement has become much more effective, the bad news of a rising number of IPR disputes manifests itself as very bad news. Furthermore, this study confirms that FDI inflows enhance IPR protection through improving government effectiveness, and government effectiveness is one of the key factors promoting FDIs . © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc .