The paper traces the rise and decline of solar cell commercialization efforts during the 1970s and early 1980s in the United States. It shows how technology policies for photovoltaic appliances gained and lost support in a time of increasing uncertainty about future resource supplies and the...

This paper analyzes the effect of an increase in patent scope on R&D and innovation. It presents a model where patent scope affects an entrant firm's technology choice and thereby creates a trade-off between R&D investments and wasteful duplication of R&D. The model predicts that an increase in...