Exclusive patents sacrifice product competition to provide firms incentives to innovate. We characterize an alternative mechanism whereby later inventors are allowed to share the patent if they discover within a certain time period of the first innovator. These runner-up patents may reduce the...

We analyze in a two-phase model the optimal mix of ex ante experimentation and ex post learning for the dynamic adoption of activities with uncertain payoffs. In a first pre-introduction phase, costly experimentation is undertaken to decide whether to adopt the activity or abandon...