This paper examines the optimal entry policy towards oligopoly in a globalized world. In an open economy free entry is socially suboptimal, but corrective tax policy to curb entry proves insufficient unless internationally harmonized. Thus, while conferring the gains from trade, globalization...

With the America Invents Act of 2011, the U.S. changed its patent-issuing rule from first-to-invent to first-to-file, the international norm. We investigate the effect of such a policy change in a two-country model of R&D competition for two sequential (basic and final) inventions. We find that...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) gives foreign firms access to local labor and inputs, thereby harmonizing costs between foreign and domestic firms relative to exports. This paper investigates the welfare effects of such cost harmonization in strategic environments, finding that when the number...

AT&T was known for both funding a world-class research lab and delaying deployment of useful innovations from the lab. To explain this behavior we consider a model with an incumbent facing a potential entrant. The incumbent can choose from two technologies for production: old and new. The...

We present a new model of dynamic Bertrand competition, where a quota is treated as an intertemporal constraint rather than as a capacity constraint as is common in the literature. The firm under a quota then can still vary the rates of exports over time provided that its total sales within the...

We examine whether cooperation in R&D leads to product market collusion. Suppose that firms engage in a stochastic R&D race while maintaining the collusive equilibrium in a repeated-game framework. Innovation under competitive R&D creates inter-firm asymmetries, which destabilizes the collusive...

Host country governments often grant investment incentives to foreign firms locating in their territories. We show that such preferential treatment of foreign firms can facilitate transfer of foreign technology, induce entry by the local firm, and increase host country welfare. However, this...

We relax the standard assumption in the strategic trade policy literature that governments possess complete information about the economy. Assuming instead that governments must obtain information from firms, we examine firms' incentive to disclose information to the governments in the...

The U.S. has been under pressure to abandon the unique first-to-invent feature of its patent law for awarding patents. The opposition to reform however argues that switch to a first-to-file rule, the international norm, will undermine innovation. We evaluate this argument in a dynamic stochastic...

We examine a foreign firm's choice between exporting and foreign direct investment (FDI) under country-specific cost uncertainty. Unlike exporting, FDI exposes foreign and home firms to common shocks. This results in a correlation of strategies, harming the firms. However, the exposure to common...