Impact of the TRIPs agreement in the international balance of payments of countries
The post-industrial society that appeared after the third industrial revolution deeply changed the production relationships and the international division of labour. Different from the beginning of the twenty century, when what characterized the development of a nation was the presence of an extensive, advanced and strong industrial park, the last quarter of that century was strongly marked by reforms that started to be implemented in the nineteen seventies (Chile, United Kingdom and US), and had as a key element the migration of the heavy and consumers goods industries to peripheral countries that offered lower labor costs and a weaker labour legislation. That process, regardless of have allowed the rising of new economic poles (in special, China) was accompanied of a continuous reinforcement of intellectual property laws in the international arena. Therefore, the lost of part of the wealth that were generated by the industrial activity, now being made in developing countries, can be compensated by financial flows that come directly from the earnings obtained by the multinational corporations of the central countries. Among those earnings are increasingly the ones derived from charges for the use of intellectual property (such as royalties derived from patents that are demanded for the productive activity). From the debate about the role of the intellectual property rights in the economic development of the peripheral nations, this project intends to assess the distribution of the international flows of wealth derived from the charges for the use of intellectual property between countries and regions with the objective of define if these flows are in fact appropriated by the countries of the centre in detriment of the countries in the periphery of the system.