Under well-settled patent law, the decision regarding whether to grant or deny a patent turns on technical fact-finding. Recommendations made in recent patent system reform reports issued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) could have a substantial...

Recent theoretical and empirical work characterizes attention as a limited resource that decision-makers strategically allocate. There has been less research on the dynamic interdependence of attention: how paying attention now may affect performance later. In this paper, we exploit...

There has recently been a resurgence of interest in how institutions affect economic performance. A review of this literature reveals that the concept of an "institution" means different things to different scholars, both within economics and across the social sciences. We discuss what factors...

There has recently been a resurgence of interest in how institutions affect economic performance. A review of this literature reveals that the concept of an 'institution' means different things to different scholars, both within economics and across the social sciences. This paper discusses what...