We examine patent pools in the context of a consortium standard. Although such pools of complementary technologies are approved by antitrust authorities, the actual implementation has proved to be problematic. We identify two possible obstacles: free riding and bargaining failure. We also...

The optimal patent breadth and length is derived for an innovating and a non-innovating country in the presence of imitation. It is found that the innovating country chooses stronger patent protection than the non-innovating country. These patents are compared to the optimal global patent design...

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)...

It has long been recognized that worker wages and possibly productivity are higher in large firms. Moreover, at least since Schumpeter (1942) economists have been interested in the relative efficiency of large firms in the research and development enterprise. This paper uses longitudinal...

This paper examines the firm level determinants of the incidence of cross-licensing. It develops a simple stochastic theory explaining such incidence, and confirms its implications based on new dataset of licensing contracts by Japanese firms. Among major findings are: (1) Licensing probability...

We develop and test a model of the patenting and R&D decisions of an innovating firm whose scientist-employees sometime quit to join or start a rival. In our model, the innovating firm patents to protect itself from its employees. We show theoretically that the risk of a scientist's departure...

The access pricing problem emerges when a vertically integrated firm (the incumbent) provides an essential service in the upstream market, to an entrant. Both firms produce a final service and compete in the downstream market. The standard treatment of this problem has been to add the access...

Consider the case of a firm with private valuation information bargaining with a supplier over the price and quantity of a good. If the firm and the supplier bargain directly, the bargaining outcome may not yield a first-best outcome due to the presence of information rents. The question we...

This paper derives firm boundaries as the outcome of an equilibrium coordination mechanism. The analysis is premised on the notion that efficient production and distribution are achieved through a mechanism that coordinates three basic activities: i) input acquisition, ii) production, iii)...

Most existing theories of the firms define a firm as a collection of physical assets, and hence can not explain the firm from a human-asset perspective, which is of particular importance for understanding human-capital intensive firms. To fill in the gap, this paper proposes an alternative...