Patent Protection and Growth: Data and Simulation Code

This dataset accompanies the paper “Patent Policy at a Tipping Point: Why Stronger Patent Protection May Not Foster Economic Growth” (Bom & Stojanovikj, Economic Modelling, 2025). The paper investigates how changes in patent protection intensity affect long-run economic growth by combining theoretical modeling with numerical simulations calibrated on real-world data.

The dataset contains two main data sources:

WB_growth.xlsx – Real GDP growth rates from the World Development Indicators (World Bank). The file includes OECD and non-OECD country identifiers, allowing for the computation of average growth rates for each group. These averages provide the empirical motivation for the baseline growth rates used in the model’s calibration.

OECD-MSTI.xlsx – Data from the OECD Main Science and Technology Indicators (MSTI) on R&D employment shares, expressed per thousand workers. These data are converted to percentages to parameterize the share of R&D labor in the simulations, distinguishing between OECD and non-OECD economies.

The accompanying MATLAB code replicates the simulation exercises reported in Sections 4.1–4.6 of the paper. The code uses the above datasets to calibrate model parameters, simulate steady-state outcomes under different levels of patent protection, and produce the quantitative results discussed in the text.

The data were obtained from publicly available sources (World Bank and OECD) and require no special access rights. Users can modify the MATLAB code to explore alternative parameter settings or country groupings.

Overall, the dataset allows researchers to replicate and extend the numerical results in the paper and to explore how different assumptions about R&D labor and economic growth influence the relationship between patent policy and long-run growth.