Patent pools have become a prominent mechanism to reduce litigation risks and facilitate the commercialization of new technologies. This paper takes advantage of a window of regulatory tolerance under the New Deal to investigate the effects of pools that would form in the absence of effective...

What is the optimal system of intellectual property rights to encourage innovation? Empirical evidence from economic history can help to inform important policy questions that have been difficult to answer with modern data: 1) Does the existence of strong patent laws encourage innovation? And 2)...