We study the relationship between the length of patent review and the importance of inventions. We build a simple model of the U.S. patent review process. Among the model predictions are that, controlling for a patent's position in a new technology cycle, more important innovations would be...

In many industries, consumers combine several components to build their own "system." This paper analyzes the incentives to standardize among firms selling a single component to consumers who have already acquired the rest of the system. By selling a component that can work with different...

This paper presents a simple model of compatibility and bundling in industries where consumers assemble several necessary components into a system that is close to their ideal. The authors show that, for a wide range of parameters, firms will choose to produce compatible components but will...

This paper studies the choice of organizational forms in a multi-task principal-agent model. We compare a functional organization in which the firm is organized into functional departments such as marketing and R&D to a product-based organization in which the firm is organized into product...