Intellectual property treaties have two main types of provisions: national treatment of foreign inventors, and harmonization of protections. I address the positive question of when countries would want to treat foreign inventors the same as domestic inventors, and how their incentive to do so...

Profit on proprietary research tools is determined partly by the remedies for infringement, such as damages and injunctions. We investigate how damages under a liability rule and the opportunity for injunctions under a property rule can affect the incentives to develop research tools. We show...

We investigate optimal rewards in an R&D model where substitute ideas for innovation arrive to random recipients at random times. By foregoing investment in a current idea, society as a whole preserves an option to invest in a better idea for the same market niche, but with delay. Because...

Patents differ from other forms of intellectual property in that independent invention is not a defense to infringement. We argue that the patent rule is inferior. First, the threat of entry by independent invention would induce patentholders to license the technology, lowering the market price....

In a labor market hierarchy, promotions are affected by the noisiness of information about the candidates. I study the hypothesis that males are more risk taking than females, and its implications for rates of promotion and abilities of survivors. I de…fine promotion hierarchies with and...