Frontmatter -- Preface -- Contents -- The setting of the problem -- Patent statistics -- The role of intellectual stimuli -- The use of important inventions as a cause of further inventions -- Productivity advance: A Case of supply and demand? -- The amount of invention is governed by the extent...

This note expounds the abstract fundamentals of the appropriability problem, re-assessing insights from three classic contributions those of Schumpeter, Arrow and Teece. Whereas the first two contributions were explicitly concerned with the implications of appropriability for society at large,...