Software is a potentially excludable public good. It is possible, at some cost, to exclude non-paying users from its consumption by using copyright law or technological restraints. Licensing the software under proprietary license terms makes of it a private good, licensing it under the BSD does...

This study’s statistical analysis shows that patent quality and innovation in China deserve improvement, and an in-depth legal, management science, and economic analysis in the study shows that various patent-related policies and practices actually hamper patent quality and innovation in...

In this paper we incorporate the interdisciplinary New Institutional and Transaction Costs Economics (combining Economics, Organization, Law, Sociology, Behavioral and Political Sciences), and suggest a framework for analyzing the mechanisms of governance of sustainable development. The...

The introduction of pharmaceutical product patents in India and other developing countries is expected to have a significant effect on public health and local pharmaceutical industries. This paper draws implications from the historical experience of Japan when it introduced product patents in...

Efficiency in energy use is crucial for sustainable development. We use cointegration analyses to investigate the effect of electricity on energy productivity in Swedish industry 1930-1990. Electricity augmented energy productivity in those industrial branches that used electricity for multiple...

This paper develops an incomplete contract model of the licensing relationship that is susceptible to the moral hazard problem. The optimal contractual form of licensing derived in the model generates predictions that seem to be consistent with actual practice. For instance, the introduction of...

Drawing from Coase's methodological lesson, this article discusses the specific case of knowledge, which was for a long time chiefly governed by exchange mechanisms lying outside the market, and has only recently been brought into the market. Its recent, heavy "colonization" by the property...

Drawing from Coase’s methodological lesson, this article discusses the specific case of knowledge, which was for a long time chiefly governed by exchange mechanisms lying outside the market, and has only recently been brought into the market. Its recent, heavy “colonization” by the...