In January 2008, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research hosted a workshop on addressing recent legislation creating a “cap-and-trade” system. Four key issues: (1) linking the California market to other GHG markets and control policies, including those in other states, Europe, and...

Low quality infrastructure is a major barrier to economic advancement in developing countries. This paper develops an empirical framework to explain the persistence of this problem as the result of a targeted program of utility subsidies. I estimate a structural model of household demand for...

Electricity and water are often subsidized in developing countries to increase their affordability for low-income households. Ideally, such subsidies would create sufficient demand in poor neighborhoods to encourage private investment in their infrastructure. Instead, many regions receiving...

This paper investigates whether patent applicants strategically withhold citations to material prior art. Citation data suggest that applicants withhold between 21% and 33% of relevant citations. Variation in withholdings is explained by patent portfolio size and indicators of patent value....

A socially optimal structure of application and renewal fees for patents would encourage the maximal number of applications while reducing effective patent length. We find, however, that when patent offices are required to be self-funding, resource constraints can distort this fee structure....

type="main" <p>Patent pools, which combine complementary patents of competing firms, are expected to increase overall welfare but potentially discourage innovation in substitutes for the pool technology. This article exploits a new historical data set on changes in patenting and firm entry for a...</p>