This paper analyzes the effect of imitation on the rate of technological progress in an endogenous growth model. Quality leaders protect themselves from imitation by secondary development, which increases technological progress. Nevertheless, lower intellectual property rights protection reduces the incentives to enter the research sector, which lowers innovation by outsiders. Simulations show ...

This paper examines how an incumbent’s patent protection acts as an implicit subsidy toward non-infringing substitutes. I analyze whether classes of pharmaceuticals whose first entrant has a longer period of market exclusivity (time between approval and generic entry) see more subsequent entry. Instrumenting for exclusivity using plausibly exogenous delays in the development process, I find tha...

Is market-based or bank-based financial system better for fostering technological innovation as an engine of growth? I present evidence that bank-based systems promote rapid technological progress in those industrial sectors that depend heavily on external finance for funding innovation by facilitating credit access to younger firms. On the other hand, I also find evidence of a general positive...

We offer a new algorithm for analyzing innovation timing games. Its main advantage over the traditional approach is that it applies to problems that had previously been intractable. We use the algorithm to examine two classical innovation problems. We find that the competition takes the form of a waiting game with a second-mover advantage either for any level of R&D costs (process innovation) o...

To study how governments can improve the quality of patent screening, we develop an integrative framework incorporating four main policy instruments: patent office examination, preand post-grant fees, and challenges in the courts. We show that examination and pregrant fees are complementary, and that pre-grant fees screen more effectively than post-grant fees. Simulations of the model, calibrat...

Comparing a process of laborand capital-augmenting technical change directed by capitalists’ maximization of profits with a counterfactual in which decentralized innovation decisions are governed by noncapitalist property relations, I claim that if the two economies start from the same technology and capital stock there’s a date T such that after T per-capita consumption is always strictly grea...

We investigate a linear state di¤erential game describing an asymmetric Cournot duopoly with capacity accumulation à la Ramsey and a negative environmental externality (pollution), in which one of the …rms has adopted corporate social responsibility (CSR) in its statute, and therefore includes consumer surplus and the environmental e¤ects of production in its objective function. If the market i...

We study how competition affects innovation (and welfare) when firms compete both in the product market and in innovation development. This relationship is complex and may lead to scenarios in which a lessening of competition increases R&D and consumer welfare in the long run, contradicting arguments provided by antitrust agencies in recent merger cases. We provide conditions for when a merger ...

We investigate empirically how the Japanese patent system has affected postwar growth in Japanese total factor productivity. The system has been criticized for several reasons, including that it encourages numerous filings of narrow claims that build incrementally on fundamental technologies developed by domestic and foreign inventors. Stated in different terms, the system was designed to promo...

We study how external versus internal innovations promote economic growth through a tractable endogenous growth framework with multiple innovation sizes, multi-product firms, and entry/exit. Firms invest in external R&D to acquire new product lines and in internal R&D to improve their existing product lines. A baseline model derives the theoretical implications of weaker scaling for external R&...