A simple dynamic general equilibrium model of savings and investment is populated by agents with Kreps-Porteus preferences. Households are heterogeneous in their risk aversion, which explains the negative relationship between aggregate investment and aggregate uncertainty. Agents trade a...

We consider the strategic choice between product innovation and logistic optimization in a novel urban framework where consumers are distributed across the city and have different incomes depending on their location in the town. Depending on the relative efficiency of the product innovation...

We study optimal licensing contracts in a differentiated Bertrand duopoly, and show that per-unit contracts are preferred to ad valorem contracts by the patentee, while welfare is higher under the ad valorem contract. The difference between Cournot and Bertrand case is explained in terms of...

We survey the rich literature studying the behaviour of labor shares in recent decades. To explain their dynamics – the main feature being the decline of European and American shares starting in the 1980s – such literature considers models that use either neoclassical or Leontief-type...

During the first half of the XX century, both in Europe and North America, a profound dissatisfaction with the numerous different social insurance, unemployment, health and old age insurance systems began to make itself felt. The essay deals with the attitudes of the Western world, and in...

We present a dynamic duopoly model of technical innovation where R&D costs decrease exogenously with time, and inter-firm knowledge spillover lowers the second comer's R&D cost. The spillover effect only becomes available after a disclosure lag. These features allow us to identify a new type of...

In our duopoly, an irreversible investment incorporates a significant amount of R&D, so that the improvement it introduces in production processes generates a spillover lowering the second comer's investment cost. The presence of the inter-firm spillover substantially affects the equilibrium of...

A wider RJV extension hastens process innovations at the cost of increasing collusion in the final market. In a Cournot model, an extended RJV is welfare enhancing only when the Antitrust Authority is strong, so that the increase in distortion is limited, and when the size of the technical...

Political short-termism obtains when a politician provides a public good that gives an immediate payoff while it would be optimal for the society that he provided a public good that gives a payoff only in the future. We consider a simple two-period political agency model and study whether...