This paper elaborates on the recent race to sequence the human genome. Starting from the debate on public vs. private research arising from the genome case, the paper shows that in some fundamental research areas, where knowledge externalities play an important role, market and non-market...

The multiple features of intellectual property rights and industrial competition are explored through the analytically rigorous lens of the frontier of the economics literature. The book covers a broad range of issues ranging from industrial espionage to collective property rights in cultural...