has just been released by USA for Innovation. Written by Kevin Hassett (Director of Economic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute) and Robert Shapiro (Chairman of Sonecon, LLC, a private consulting firm), it reviews a number of empirical studies on creativity and its legal protection. The bottom line:

Extensive economic research and analysis have established that economically-powerful forms of intellectual property, embodied in innovations, are the largest single factor driving economic growth and development, and that intellectual property protections are critical for the development and diffusion of those innovations. The evidence further demonstrates that the pace at which developing nations grow and modernize depends substantially on the transfer of these innovations from advanced nations, and that intellectual property protections in developing nations play a critical role in determining the extent of those transfers.

In many parts of the developing world today, lack of respect for intellectual property rights or lax enforcement of those rights remains the rule rather than the exception. Moreover, since 2001, the United States government has effectively neglected these issues. If the American government did so, the pace of innovation in the United States would accelerate and the diffusion of new technologies to the world's developing nations would increase, ultimately promoting faster and broader globabl growth and modernization.