Economists have long noted the importance of clear laws and property rights to facilitate transactions and promote economic activity and growth. Intellectual property including copyrights is part of the fabric of property both in the United States and around the world. Empirical studies support...

Utilizing panel data for 19 OECD countries we find support for the hypothesis that a greater degree of product variety relative to the US helps to explain relative per capita GDP levels. The empirical work relies upon some direct measures of product variety calculated from 6-digit OECD export...