Patents impose static costs by restricting price-competition, but may provide static benefits by promoting non-price competition. Competitive firms engage in inefficient levels of non-price competition, when this has external effects on competitors. For example, patent monopolies may market more...

For decades, the US public and private sectors have committed substantial resources towards cancer research, but the societal payoff has not been well-understood. We quantify the value of recent gains in cancer survival, and analyze the distribution of value among various stakeholders. Between...

This paper provides a theoretical and empirical examination of the long-run growth in weight over time. We argue that technological change has induced weight growth by making home- and market-production more sedentary and by lowering food prices through agricultural innovation. We analyze how...

Industries in which private nonprofit production is present and significant, such as health care and education, account for more than one-fifth of US economic activity. This paper argues that previous analysis of nonprofits has not separated profit-deviating preferences from the state-defined...

This paper analyzes how markets for old-age care respond to the aging of populations. We consider how the biological forces, which govern the stocks of frail and healthy persons in a population, interact with economic forces, which govern the demand for and supply of care. We argue that aging...

Patent protection spurs innovation by raising the rewards for research, but it usually results in less desirable allocations after the innovation has been discovered. In effect, patents reward inventors with inefficient monopoly power. However, previous analysis of intellectual property has...

This paper analyzes how markets for old-age care respond to the aging of populations. We consider how the biological forces, which govern the stocks of frail and healthy persons in a population, interacct with economic forces, which govern the demand and suppoly for labor-intensive care. Many...