科学研究

Ge Bao is Associate Professor of Economics at School of International Trade and Economics, University of International Business and Economics. Professor Bao’s research lies at the intersection of multinational firms, international trade, and economic history. Her work has been published in academic journals such as the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics，World Economy and Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. She presides over the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Youth Project.

We investigate how firms, markets, and consumer welfare adapt to trademark protection, an extensively utilized but under-examined form of IP protection intended to address asymmetric information, by exploring a historical precedent: China’s trademark law of 1923. Exploiting unique, newly digitized firm-employee, price, and newspaper data from Shanghai’s Concession Era, we show that the trademark law, established as an unanticipated and Western-disapproved response to end foreign privileges in China, significantly reduced information friction and shaped firm dynamics and market allocation on the opposite sides of trademark conflicts. Western firms that suffered from counterfeits decreased dependence on alternative communication channels and gained market share from Japanese counterparts who were most frequently accused of counterfeiting. The reduced information friction did not result in higher brand prices as new authentic varieties emerged after the law, leading to a coexistence of trademarks and competitive markets. Quantifying the consumer welfare effect based on the empirical findings suggests a 4.2% welfare gain from the trademark law. A comparison with previous attempts by foreign powers—such as extraterritorial rights and bilateral treaties—shows that the alternative institutions were broadly unsuccessful.