The number of requests for patent examination showed a significant increase of 83% from 1997 to 2007 in Japan, while the number of patent applications increased by only 1%. This paper aims at theoretically and empirically analyzing the causes of recent "explosion" of examination requests,...

...

...

...

This paper demonstrates endogenous fluctuations of aggregate investments when firm-level investments follow an (S,s) policy and exhibit strategic complementarity. We present a method to characterize the aggregate fluctuations that arise from the interaction of the (S,s) policies. A closed-form...

A significant part of the patents held by a firm are not used. We show that, given the uncertainty of invention quality at the patent application stage and the sunk cost incurred for obtaining and developing a patent, the patent (internal) utilization rate declines with the (anticipated) size of...

This paper presents estimates of the long-term impact of various sources of knowledge (R&D performed by the business sector, the public sector and foreign firms) on multifactor productivity growth of 16 countries from 1980 to 1998. The main results show that the three sources of knowledge are...