George Mason University Law Review: Patents And The Wealth Of Nations, by Stephen Haber
This report originally appeared in the George Mason University Law Review on May 9, 2016.
There is abundant evidence from economics and history that the world’s wealthy countries grew rich because they had well-developed systems of private property. Clearly defined and impartially enforced property rights were crucial to economic development; they facilitated trade, trade allowed individuals and business enterprises to specialize, specialization made individuals and business enterprises more productive, and more productive firms and individuals in the aggregate raised national income. Innovation and economic growth, in short, emerged out of property systems that allowed economies to operate as a web of contracts. The origin of these ideas go back to Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations…