Prizes have become a prominent alternative to patents as a mechanism to encourage innovation. This paper exploits the selection of prize-winning technologies among exhibitors at the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition in London in 1851 to examine whether – and how – prizes may encourage...

In 1996, the chemical firm Monsanto bought a plant breeder that had developed a new corn hybrid, which could withstand Monsanto’s powerful herbicide Roundup. Due to the pre-existing structure of the US plant-breeding industry, this acquisition and Monsanto’s acquisition of five other corn...

Patent pools allow competing firms to combine their patents and license them as a package to outside firms. Regulators today favor pools that license their patents freely to outside firms, making it difficult to observe the unconstrained licensing strategies of patent pools. This paper takes...