Os Contratos de Licenciamento e a Eficiência Técnica dos Setores Industriais Brasileiros: Uma Análise à Luz do Método de Fronteira Estocástica e da Análise Envoltória de Dados (DEA)

The paper addresses the relationship between licenses and technical efficiency in a set of Brazilian industrial sectors. The main hypothesis is that licenses are negatively related with technical efficiency. To test this hypothesis, a stochastic and a non-parametric frontier were estimated for ten industrial sectors in the period from 1992 to 2000. Three results were found out: First, licenses and efficiency are negatively related; Second, the law’s adjustment contributed to the efficiency to all sectors. Third, law’s adjustment also emphasized the negative effect of licenses on technical efficiency. The arguments are the following: The first result is associated with licenses acting as entries barriers to specific industries. In the second argument, the law could have provided incentives to other aspects of industrial property other than the licenses, such as innovations, for an example. The third result may be associated with the inclusion of the compulsory license mechanism in the law, which may result in an increase in the number of licenses and also reducing the competition inside each sector, due to its compulsory aspects evolving firm behavior.