For a report which its commissioners could only want support for its position, the message is surprisingly lukewarm. Take Figure 9 for example, which compares global competitiveness with strength of IP protection. Both measures are problematic, but presumably PWC were charged with finding the most supportive evidence, so this must be it.
The authors optimistically say that "there is a positive correlation between perception of the IP framework and overall competitiveness". Actually, there isn't. Had PWC undertaken an elementary statistical test (Spearmans Rank), they would have found the degree of correlation to be 0.395, which is statistically non-significant for 18 data pairs. A more accurate summary would be a statement that there is no correlation between strength of IP protection and a country's competitiveness.
A second oddity is the transaction chain for higher education licensing with CMOs. Not only does it focus on only part of the transaction chain, leaving out the part in which higher education subsidises the chain, it assumes that academics are busy copying sections of books by commercial authors, rather than copying papers in academic journals. And not surprisingly at all, the analysis ignores the impact of Open Access material on transaction costs.
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