Software is a potentially excludable public good. It is possible, at some cost, to exclude non-paying users from its consumption by using copyright law or technological restraints. Licensing the software under proprietary license terms makes of it a private good, licensing it under the BSD does...

In this paper, I study industry-university relations in a principal- agent framework. Following the existing literature, these relations are interpreted in two ways: (1) as occurring through spillovers of knowledge among different groups of researchers, working for different institutional...

We characterize asymmetric equilibria in two-stage process innovation games and show that they are prevalent in the different models of R&D technology considered in the literature. Indeed, cooperation in R&D may be accompanied by high concentration in the product market. We show that while such...

As the valuation of strategic measures becomes increasingly important, relatively few articles have discussed the valuation methods pertained for joint ventures. This paper shows that real options contribute to a better valuation of joint venture projects through superior reflection of the value...

Purpose - In response to the need of new knowledge about the international joint venture (IJV), the purpose of this study presents an analysis of the basic characteristics of the IJVs in Bulgaria and the variation of their characteristics depending on the nationality of the foreign partners,...

In this paper, we prove that two firms can choose not to include a termination clause in their partnership contract, thus inducing a costly termination in case of failure of the joint project. This ex-post inefficiency induces partners to exert large non-contractible efforts (investments) to...

A recent merger “wave” has occurred within the economy, including the agricultural sector. Some research has been conducted on publicly traded companies, but there is little information available on merger activity within agricultural cooperatives. This paper presents the results of a recent...

Conviction rates in Japan exceed 99 percent -- why? On the one hand, because Japanese prosecutors are badly understaffed they may prosecute only their strongest cases and present judges only with the most obviously guilty defendants. On the other, because Japanese judges can be reassigned by the...

In this paper we explain the prevalence of explicit contracts of employment, particularly those that embody high- rather than low-powered incentives and clauses that supersede the common law defaults. Our analysis is based on an understanding of two fundamental problems that arise when agency...