It may be advantageous to provide a variety of kinds of patent protection to heterogenous innovations. Innovations which benefit society largely through their use as building blocks to future inventions may require a different scope of protection in order to be encouraged. We model the problem...

This paper studies a simple model of experimentation and innovation. Our analysis suggests that patents may improve the allocation of resources by encouraging rapid experimentation and efficient ex post transfer of knowledge across firms. Each firm receives a private signal on the success...

Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) - a general purpose technology affecting many industries - has been focused on advances in machine learning, which we recast as a quality-adjusted drop in the price of prediction. How will this sharp drop in price impact society? Policy will...

Since the late 1980s the global intellectual property rights (IPR) system has been strengthening dramatically as much of the developing world introduces patent protection for new drug products. This may lead to more research on drugs to address developing country needs. As there are identifiable...

This paper examines three sets of explanations for variations in the strength of patent protection across sixty countries and a 150-year period. Wealthier nations are more likely to have patent systems, to allow patentees a longer time to put their patents into practice, and to ratify treaties...

Does an expansion of patent scope induce more innovative effort by firms? This article provides evidence on this question by examining firm responses to the Japanese patent reforms of 1988. Interviews with practitioners suggest the reforms significantly expanded the scope of patent rights in...

We estimate the effect of patent protection on follow-on investments in corporate scientific research. We exploit a new method for identifying an exogenous reduction in the protection a granted patent provides. Using data on public, research-active firms between 1990 and 2015, we find that firms...

How do non-practicing entities ("Patent Trolls") impact innovation and technological progress? Although this question has important implications for industrial policy, little direct evidence about it exists. This paper provides new theoretical and empirical evidence to fill that gap. In the...

By thoroughly controlling for the country covariates, through a combination of matched sampling techniques with fixed-effect panel regression models, the analyses arrive at robust results across the various model specifications. First, national pharmaceutical patent protection alone does not...

What form of intellectual property rights (IPR) policy contributes to economic growth? Should technological followers be able to license the products of technological leaders? Should a company with a large technological lead receive the same IPR protection as a company with a more limited lead?...