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Highlights • We use dynamic panel regression analysis for 70 countries from 1965–2009. • We find that patent rights have no effect on productivity growth. • We offer an alternative explanation, finding the ECI positive and significant. • Our results lend evidence that patent rights are insufficient for the inducement of productivity. • We argue it is not discovery that increases productivity, but the ability to adapt. Abstract Does the rigorous protection of patents advance or retard economic development? Two decades ago, a new global standard of intellectual property swept across developing and industrialized nations through the implementation of the WTO's TRIPS Agreement. Many years later, the issue of patent rights remains contentious. In this paper, we focus on the effects of patent rights systems on total factor productivity growth, using dynamic panel regression analysis for 70 countries from 1965 to 2009. We show that the effects of stronger or more rigorous patent systems are insignificant for productivity growth in both developing and industrialized countries. Why does the strength of patents appear to have no impact on productivity? Classic economic theory suggests that stronger patent systems incentive innovative output with important spill-over effects for productivity and growth. We offer an alternative explanation using data from the Economic Complexity Index. We find that while patents rights are increasingly irrelevant to productivity, the relationship between economic complexity and productivity is highly positive and significant. Our results are consistent with the contributions of the absorptive capacity theory in that they suggest it is not the discovery and ownership of novel products and processes at the innovative frontier that induces productive growth, but the ability to adapt, replicate and diffuse along the international productive chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pathways toward 'overshoot and collapse' futures are not always or exclusively determined by international trends, national governments, wars and large-scale events. While these gain considerable attention their overall impact is arguably no greater than the constant 'drip, drip, drip' of conventional decision-making around more mundane activities that fall under familiar headings like 'business strategy', 'economic growth' and 'development'. While cities have master plans and strategic goals most of them evolve within, and are expressed through, a continuous series of commercially inspired projects founded on narrow short-term economic assumptions. They emerge from a typically up-beat, entrepreneurial (profit-oriented) and finance-based worldview that is little short of delusional. As a result, many large-scale projects are poorly conceived and end up working against shared community interests. The central purpose of this paper is to contribute toward a broad re-appraisal of such projects in the hope that future 'developments' can be turned toward more consciously proactive and socially responsible ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies the dynamic panel data generalized method of moments estimator to the data on commercial passenger air traffic at all primary airports in the United States to evaluate the impact of traffic volume and number of destinations served with non-stop flights on the key indicators of regional economic development. We find that number of destinations served with non-stop flights has a much clearer and more robust impact on level of employment, number of business establishments, and average wage in the region. Passenger traffic volume affects employment and average wage, but not number of establishments. At the sample median, connecting a metropolitan statistical area with an extra destination, keeping everything else constant, creates 98 jobs and facilitates the opening of four new business establishments that employ people. The corresponding numbers for the sample mean are 223 jobs and 15 businesses. The impact of air travel on regional economic development is influenced by competition on the respective airline markets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]