Intellectual property law constitutes one of the primary policy tools by which society influences the development and design of new technologies. However, the underlying philosophical basis for this system of rewards has gone largely unexamined. For example, implicit in the intellectual property...

This comment letter was recently submitted to the FDIC in response to their Single Point of Entry (SPOE) Strategy for implementing Dodd Frank's Orderly Liquidation Authority (Federal Register/Vol. 78, No. 243).In the comment letter, I describe SPOE as a promising first start, but urge the agency...

We propose a theory of rational "Rush", emphasizing the quantity of rational over-investment in contrast to the theory of irrational price "Bubble". We illustrate an important friction when financing breakthrough innovations: non-excludability and spillover of uncertain knowledge due to...

Entrepreneurial ventures often face liquidity constraints. While governments have intervened with programs subsidizing R&D projects, these programs may have their effectiveness undermined by the restrictions they impose on subsidy recipients. We study the impact on venture outcomes of one...

This paper argues that, although AI machines are increasingly able to produce outputs that facially qualify for copyright or patent protection, such outputs should not be protected by law when they have no identifiable human cause, that is, when the autonomy of the machine is such that it breaks...

The patent system is a central tool in innovation policy. The prospect of monopolistic pricing conferred by patent protection supposedly encourages firms to innovate. However, there is scant empirical evidence supporting the existence of higher markups for patent-protected products. Using an...

For the first time ever, the Supreme Court's seminal decision in Grokster permits the theory of secondary liability in copyright law to be rationalized. That case confirmed two important principles: (1) that secondary liability in copyright is a matter of federal common law; and (2) that, unlike...

In the consumer protection context, most research on American families assesses the extent of harm from overindebtedness along a single dimension: debt, or its kissing cousin, wealth. This essay examines the limitation of this analytical approach and argues that unmanageable debt may harm...

Patents have long been regarded as the 'gold standard' of intellectual property protection. In 'Little patents and big secrets: managing intellectual property', Anton and Yao (2004) call this traditional view into question by finding that firms keep their most important innovations secret. This...