The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power “to Promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts” by granting copyrights and patents to authors and inventors. Most courts and scholars understand this language to entail a utilitarian or consequentialist approach to intellectual...

The ultimate end of patent law must be to spur innovations that improve human welfare — innovations that make people better off. But firms will only invest resources in developing patentable inventions that will allow them to make money — that is, inventions that people will want to use and...

When administrative agencies regulate, they are legally required to quantify the costs and benefits of their regulations. Yet most agencies struggle at this task. This is in part because a large number of regulations provide benefits that are not traded in markets and cannot be easily priced....

How do regulatory agencies decide how strictly to regulate an industry? They sometimes use cost-benefit analysis or claim to, but more often the standards they invoke are so vague as to be meaningless. This raises the question whether the agencies use an implicit standard or instead regulate in...