Much of today’s software relies on programming code shared openly online. Yet, it is unclear why volunteer developers contribute to open-source software (OSS), a public good. We study OSS contributions of some 22,900 developers worldwide on the largest online code repository platform, GitHub,...

This study examines whether staged project management is beneficial or harmful for making product innovations. Using a unique firm urvey for Japan, we find that firms that employed staged project management had a higher likelihood of introducing new products to the market. Additional estimations...

This paper derives a three stage Cournotoligopoly game for product innovation, expenditure on introducing the product and competition on the product market. Product innovation is assumed to increase consumer utility but is effective only if the innovating firm invests in marketing, so that...

We examine the relation between consumer search and equilibrium prices when collusion is endogenously determined. We develop a theoretical model and show that average price is a U-shaped function of the measure of searchers: prices are highest when there are no searchers (local monopoly power)...

In this study, we analyze the incentives of a streaming platform to bias consumption when products are vertically differentiated. The platform offers mixed bundles of content to monetize consumer interest in variety and pays royalties to sellers based on the effective consumption of the...

We study the incentives of a streaming platform to bias consumption when products are vertically differentiated. The platform offers mixed bundles of content to monetize consumers' interest in variety and pays royalties to sellers based on the effective consumption of the content they produce....

This paper studies a principal-agent relation in which the principal's private information about the agent's effort choice is more accurate than a noisy public performance measure. For some contingencies the optimal contract has to specify ex post inefficiencies in the form of inefficient...

Economic development theories and their learning frameworks differently address farms and firms. This article argues that the traditional double-standard of the primacy of manufacturing rests on a debatable stages model that under-recognizes learning and innovation in agriculture and its...

Functioning markets for technology are an important determinant for the type, scope and distribution of innovation activities in an economy. However, markets for technology are often underdeveloped or inefficient. Existing theory attributes such imperfections to the supply side or differences in...

We investigate the causal effect of patent rights on cumulative innovation, using large-scale data that approximate the patent universe in its technological and economic variety. We introduce a novel instrumental variable for patent invalidation that exploits personnel scarcity in post-grant...