This paper examines how product market competition affects firms’ timing of adopting a new technology as well as whether the market provides sufficient adoption incentives. It shows that adoption dates differ not only among symmetric firms but also among markets with Cournot and Bertrand...

We develop a two-sided matching model to analyze collaboration between heterogeneous academics and firms. We predict a positive assortative matching in terms of both scientific ability and affinity for type of research, but negative assortative in terms of ability on one side and affinity in the...

Access to information may represent an important barrier to learning about and ultimately transferring to 4-year colleges for low-income community college students. This paper explores the role that access to information technology, in particular, plays in enhancing, or possibly detracting from,...

Continued lobbying by high-end, American designers for intellectual property-type fashion design protection has culminated in the proposed Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act, intended to introduce EU standards. Using a sequential, 2-firm, vertical differentiation framework,...

This paper studies the incentives that developing countries have to protect intellectual properties rights (IPR). On the one hand, free-riding on rich countries technology reduces their investment cost in R&D. On the other hand, firm that violates IPR cannot legally export in a country that...

In this paper, we offer a novel explanation to the surge in patenting bserved during the last years. With low patentability standards at PTOs (Patent and Trademark Offices awarding so-called bad patents), not only “false innovators” have the chance of being granted patents but also, and more...

This paper analyzes the optimal protection strategy for an innovator of a complex innovation who faces the risk of imitation by a competitor. We suppose that the innovation can be continuously fragmented into sub-innovations. We characterize the optimal mix of patent and trade secrets when the...

Recent empirical studies suggest a need for a flexible patent regime responding to industry characteristics. In practice, sector-specific modifications of patent strength already exist but lack theoretical foundation. This paper intends to make up for this neglect by scrutinizing in what...

We construct a tractable general equilibrium model of cumulative innovation and growth, in which new ideas strictly improve upon frontier technologies, and productivity improvements are drawn in a stochastic manner. The presence of positive knowledge spillovers implies that the decentralized...

This paper uses a gravity framework to investigate the effects of distance as well as subnational and national borders in knowledge spillovers. Drawing on the NBER Patent Citations Database, we examine patent citations data at metropolitan level within the U.S. and the 38 largest patent-cited...