Philip Cheng, Brian Hilton and Chong Choi argue that the importance of knowledge has created a convergence of research interests for developed, high income and developing, low-income economies that makes the issue of knowledge a critical one in research into the evolving global economy. They explore the potential role knowledge could play in the developing and emerging economies, especially in their capacity to exchange knowledge with the rest of the world through the market through an appropriate system for establishing individual intellectual property rights.