I+D y espionaje: efectos sobre la renta, el crecimiento y la desigualdad

A strand of growth literature considers intangible assets -such as ideas and knowledge- as the main engine for economic prosperity. Because of its intrinsic nature ideas are much more easily stolen than traditional production factors such as physical capital and land. We consider an economy in which innovation consists in upgrading the quality of the existing products, and in which the product variety grows in proportion to population size. Inspired by recent evidence, we assume that ideas theft can occur at the R&D level. We show that with growing population and with a large enough population growth rate, the fraction of labor engaged in spying activities tends to be constant. In economies where the R&D process is more vulnerable to idea theft, growth rates are lower. Finally, we show that undifferentiated R&D subsidies have no long run growth effects, but subsidies positively affect wages