T he United States is home to some of the most innovative companies in the world, such as Apple, Facebook, and Google, to name a few. Inventive activity depends on research and development, and R&D depends on, among other things, the exchange of ideas among individuals. People’s physical...

T he United States is home to some of the most innovative companies in the world, such as Apple, Facebook, and Google, to name a few. Inventive activity depends on research and development, and R&D depends on, among other things, the exchange of ideas among individuals. People’s physical...

In recent years, the courts have determined that business methods can be patented, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted some 12,000 patents of this sort. Has the availability of patents for business methods increased the rate of innovation in the U.S. financial sector?...

In other parts of the economy, firms are increasingly turning to patents to protect not just physical inventions but more abstract ones such as computer programs or ways of doing business. Just two decades ago such patents would have been impossible to obtain, let alone enforce. In "You Can...

In "What's in the File? The Economics and Law of Consumer Credit Bureaus," author Bob Hunt points out that lenders in the United States have voluntarily shared information about their customers - through credit bureaus - for nearly a century. Hunt explains how sharing information about...

Bob Hunt outlines the history of credit counseling in the U.S. He also observes that, despite its long track record, the credit counseling industry is not without controversy. For example, in recent years, concerns about conflicts of interest and the emergence of a new type of credit counseling...

Why should economic scholars study the consumer debt collection process? First, the cost and effectiveness of the collections process has implications for the pricing and availability of consumer credit. Second, changes in technology and the structure of credit markets have transformed the...

The various regions of the United States, although linked, respond differently to changing economic circumstances. Traditional approaches to understanding these different reactions have relied on the assumption that long-run trends in regional income or employment are constant. Recently, many...