Developing countries, and particularly, those with a growing technological capacity, expect foreign technology transfers to increase when strengthening their intellectual property protection (IPR) rights. This paper evaluates empirically the impact of IPR on disembodied knowledge trade. It...

The purpose of this study is to stress on two important points. First of all, I wish to draw attention to the IP strengthening, more particularly in software and business methods areas because these informational goods could be viewed as generic assets in digital economy and have a key role for...

The paper analyzes the interplay between technology diffusion and patent law. We develop a dynamic model where initial adoptions generate learning spillovers that reduce the cost of subsequent adoptions. In this setting, we contrast technology diffusion paths under competitive supply, subsidized...

The aim of this paper is to focus on the emerging situation in which open source software is nowadays produced not only by individual developers but in a growing proportion by firms that hire programmers for their own objectives of development in open source or for contributing to open source...

This article deals with the impact of legislation in the seed sector on incentives for variety creation. The first category of rules consists in intellectual property rights and is intended to address a problem of sequential innovation and R&D investments. The second category concerns commercial...

Several recent cases judged by the Court of Justice of the European Communities (the Court) have raised interesting issues related to the possibility for operators of food chains to use national quality signs to indicate territory of origin, which are different from the regulatory European...

This paper explores various dimensions of the learning process for low-carbon technologies under different mitigation scenarios. It uses the POLES model, which addresses learning as an endogenous phenomenon with learning curves, and a set of scenarios developed as part of the AMPERE project. It...

This paper reviews evidence that energy technologies and systems adapt over time to accomodate external pressures: that technical innovation and systemic change in the energy sector is largely induced by need, and restrained by potentially large transitional costs. A simple integrated model of...

This paper aims to investigate the transition to a new energy system based on hydrogen in the European liberalized framework. After analyzing the literature on the hydrogen infrastructure needs in Europe, we estimate the size and scope of the transition challenge.We take the theoretical...

This paper proposes a model of entrepreneurial turnover highlighting a non-monotone relationship between technological change and ability-biased sorting into entrepreneurial types. Entrepreneurial decisions are examined in a two-stage model under uncertainty in which entrepreneurs decide to...