R&D Cooperation, Innovation, and Growth

This paper presents a standard endogenous growth framework in which the source of growth is represented by vertical innovations. The crucial assumption we introduce is that there is a positive information gap concerning the discovery of innovation. The aim of reducing the information-dissemination lag provides incentives for firms to decide to merge their research efforts. Also, we find that the skilled--unskilled wage gap is strongly related to this phenomenon. We prove that changing antitrust attitudes toward efficiency-motivated mergers in contestable industries may simultaneously explain observed changes in the industry structure, qualitative innovation, wage inequality, and labor-supply composition.