It is a widely adopted practice for firms to announce new products well in advance of actual market availability, especially in the computer industry. In this article, a firm makes pre-announcements on its product, which are "cheap talk." We develop a reputation model of "vaporware" where the...

This article develops a framework to analyze the incentives to form a patent pool or engage in cross-licensing arrangements in the presence of uncertainty about the validity and coverage of patents that makes disputes inevitable. It analyzes the private incentives to litigate and compares them...

Multinationals often serve foreign markets by exporting as well as by investing directly in foreign production facilities. We argue that if the multinational competes in an oligopolistic market characterized by strategic complements then there are strategic reasons to use two production...

This article develops a simple framework for analyzing the links between corruption and the unofficial economy and their implications for the official economy. In a model of self-selection with heterogeneous entrepreneurs, we show that the entrepreneurs' option to flee to the underground economy...

This article develops an incomplete contract model of the licensing relationship to analyze the dynamic effects of licensing on R&D competition in the innovation market and to examine the rationale for often observed "grant-back" clauses. Of particular concern are how the consideration of future...