The case against patents can be summarized briefly: there is no empirical evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity. There is strong evidence, instead, that patents have many negative consequences

Intellectual property (IP) protection involves a trade-off between the undesirability of monopoly and the desirable encouragement of creation and innovation. Optimal policy depends on the quantitative strength of these two forces. We give a quantitative assessment of current IP policies. We...

The data show that an increase in government provided old-age pensions is strongly correlated with a reduction in fertility. What type of model is consistent with this finding? We explore this question using two models of fertility, the one by Barro and Becker (1989), and the one inspired by...

Intellectual property (IP) protection involves a trade-off between the undesirability of monopoly and the desirable encouragement of creation and innovation. Optimal policy depends on the quantitative strength of these two forces. We give a quantitative assessment of current IP policies. We...

We develop a model which accounts for the observed equity premium and average risk free rate, without implying counterfactually high risk aversion. The model also does well in accounting for business cycle phenomena. With respect to the conventional measures of business cycle volatility and...