In recent years data-sharing has been a recurring focus of struggle within the scientific research community as improvements in information technology and digital networks have expanded the ways that data can be produced, disseminated, and used. Information technology makes it easier to share...

The recent explosive growth of managed health care has occurred in large part because of a recognition that we need to make cost-benefit trade-offs in health care. Managed care plans typically make cost-benefit trade-offs by giving plan physicians financial incentives to reduce medical spending...

This report addresses a deceptively simple question: How can the productivity of American health care be substantially improved? Productivity, in lay terms, is the ratio of output to inputs. A more colloquial rendition of the question might be: how can we get a lot more bang for our health care...

Innovation is central to economic growth and human welfare. Government officials and commentators have recognized this reality and have called for a variety of different substantive incentives for stimulating innovation. But the question of how an innovation regulator should be structured has...

The campaign to curtail "fraud and abuse" in the Medicare and Medicaid programs represents an attempt by regulators to evade more fundamental and difficult questions regarding cost and quality control. In the Medicare arena, tackling these larger questions will require dismantling the program's...

Scholars have spilled much ink questioning patent quality. Complaints encompass concern about incoming applications, examination by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”), and the USPTO’s ultimate output. The literature and some empirical data also suggest, however, that...

We the undersigned professors of law and economics offer this comment on the USPTO’s notice of proposed rulemaking to change how the Patent Trial and Appeal Board will construe patent claims in its administrative trial proceedings. As a group, our research explores a wide range of issues in...