In a patent thicket licensing provides a mechanism to either avoid or resolve hold-up. Firms' R&D incentives will differ depending on how licensing is used. In this paper we study the choice between ex ante licensing to avoid hold-up and ex post licensing to resolve it. Building on a theoretical...

Licensing in a patent thicket allows firms to either avoid or resolve hold-up. Firms' R&D incentives depend on whether they license ex ante or ex post. We develop a model of a patent portfolio race, which allows for endogenous R&D efforts, to study firms' choice between ex ante and ex post...

Filson (2001) uses industry-level data on firm numbers, price, quantity, and quality along with an equilibrium model of industry evolution to estimate the nature and effects of quality and cost improvement in the personal computer industry and four other new industries. This paper studies the...

This paper estimates the nature and effects of quality and cost innovations in the early automobile, personal computer, rigid disk drive, computer monitor, and computer printer industries using industry-level data on firm numbers, price, quantity, and quality along with an equilibrium model of...

This paper investigates the effects of employee mobility on industry evolution and technology diffusion by testing a dynamic industry equilibrium model introduced in Franco and Filson (1999). The model focuses on a particular type of employee mobility: researchers can leave existing firms and...

The 'new electronics technology' in its various manifestations has been very much in the limelight during recent years. It has been associated with future mass unemployment or scary visions of a Brave New World, a grand discontinuity in economic and cultural development. Governments are worried...

About the end of 2006, Microsoft began delivering its new Windows Vista PC operating system to large commercial customers, followed by final users and small businesses. Even before the product reached the market, the dominant provider of PC operating systems worldwide was accused over and over...

Nanotechnologie ist eine technologische Innovation, die aufgrund ihrer absehbaren vielfältigen Anwendungsmöglichkeiten große Hoffnungen auf neue Wachstumschancen der Wirtschaft weckt. Derzeit befindet sich die Nanotechnologie noch überwiegend in einer Phase der Grundlagenforschung, in...

Am Beispiel der IKT-Wirtschaft zeigt sich, dass junge Unternehmen stärker als etablierte dazu neigen, bei ihren Produkt- und Verfahrensinnovationen auch neue IKT-Lösungen zu entwickeln und anzuwenden. Start-ups der IKT-Wirtschaft spielen damit nicht nur eine wichtige Rolle für die...

This paper provides an overview of the currently available evidence on the importance of information and communication technologies (ICT) for developments in productivity growth in the euro area. On the basis of the available data, there is evidence of an increased contribution of ICT to...