We build an economics department entirely composed of Nobel Prize winners and evaluate it using standard research assessment metrics. Performing the same evaluation on existing departments, we find that the rating of our Nobel Prize department does not stand out from other good departments....

We analyse the effect of grant-back clauses in licensing contracts. Because they require the licensee to “give back” further innovation to the licensor without compensation of for a compensation that is not linked to the value of the follow-on innovation, grantback clauses decrease the...

This paper studies the choice of organizational forms in a multi-task principal-agent model. We compare a functional organization in which the firm is organized into functional departments such as marketing and R&D to a product-based organization in which the firm is organized into product...

We present a selective survey of the economic theory of intellectual property rights. After a brief description of the institutional framework, we discuss policy objectives and some basic welfare tradeoffs in intellectual property design. We consider the extent to which social objectives can be...

The existing literature on international macroeconomic policy coordination makes the unrealistic assumption that policy-makers all know the true model, from which it follows in general that the Nash bargaining solution is superior to the Nash non-cooperative solution. But everything changes once...

We investigate the choice of compensation scheme by firms. Our basic model shows that the unique equilibrium choice for profit maximizing duopsonists in a labor market is for one firm to offer a wage rate and for the other to offer a piece rate. this result arises because the firms recognize...