One result of the deregulation of utilities in New Zealand has been the bypass of existing networks. We investigate two cases of bypass in the distribution of natural gas, and compare the welfare properties of regulation vs.\ the `laissez-faire' equilibrium. We demonstrate that installing a...

We present a discrete-time version of an otherwise standard Schumpeterian growth model. Discrete time exhibits two important differences from continuous time. First, the probability of successful innovation cannot be homogeneous of degree one in inputs. A natural R&D analogue to constant returns...

In a truly remarkable contribution, Boldrin and Levine demonstrate that under certain conditions "first-copy costs" of innovation can be funded by revenues from sales of copies without resort to government franchise such as patent and copyright. Advocates of "free software", software licensed...

This paper presents a micro-model of knowledge creation and transfer in a small group of people. It is intended to contribute eventually to the development of microfoundations for aggregate models of knowledge externalities used in various literatures, such as those pertaining to endogenous...

Patentability of basic research together with complementarity between basic research and commercialization development leads to the problem called "anti-commons" where assigning exclusive rights of a resource to more than one entity reduces usage of the resource. Transition from (not-for-profit)...

The market value of U.S. corporations, relative to the replacement cost of their tangible assets, declined by about 50% in 1973-74, and stagnated at that level for the following decade. This collapse in market valuations exactly coincides with the Oil Crisis of October 1973. Over the 1973-78...

This paper employs a new global panel data set on innovation related variables to examine patterns of R&D investment across the development process. We find that R&D effort measured as a share of GDP rises with development at an increasing rate, but that several countries have experienced...

We propose a novel estimator for the stochastic discount factor (SDF) in a panel-data context. Under general conditions it depends exclusively on appropriate averages of asset returns, and its computation is a direct exercise, as long as one has enough observations to our asymptotic results. We...

We consider the behavior of the price of a continuously stored commodity, for which discounted price is a non-constant martingale, and thus not-predictable. We prove that the discounted price realization is within any given neighborhood of zero, with any given probability less than 1, beyond a...

While the existence of fixed costs in entering asset markets is the leading rationalization of the "participation puzzle" -the fact that most households do not hold stocks, despite the diversification gains and the significant risk-premium involved-, most motivations of these fixed costs are as...