Government subsidies for R&D are intended to promote projects with high returns to society but too little private returns to be beneficial for private investors. This may be caused by spillovers or a low appropriability rate. Apart from the direct funding of these projects, government grants may...

Big companies and small innovation factories possess different advantages in a patent contest. While large firms typically have a better access to product markets, small firms often have a superior R&D efficiency. In this paper I model a patent contest with asymmetric firms. In a pre-contest...