This paper examines the interaction between intellectual property protection and competition policy on the choice of entrepreneurs with respect to commercialization as well as the rate of innovation. We find that stronger intellectual property protection makes it more likely that entrepreneurs will commercialize by cooperating with incumbents rather than competing with them. Consequently, we de...

New ideas or technologies are often advocated because of their purported improvements on existing methods. However, what is new is usually less well-known and less widely tested than what is old. New methods may entail greater unknown dangers as well as greater potential advantages. The policy maker who must choose between innovation and convention faces a dilemma of innovation. We present a me...

The conventional wisdom is that government decentralization promotes policy innovation because it allows for several simultaneous experiments by local governments. However, this ignores a learning externality: successful policy experiments provide useful information for all governments. Local governments will ignore this externality, but a central government should take it into account. This pa...

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Is the Innovation Society sustainable? We argue that the way in which our society organizes its innovation processes generates endogenous crises, and the ideology that sustains this organization makes it difficult to confront this meta-crisis economically or politically. We claim that the key to constructing a socially sustainable future is the mobilization of civil society, with respect to two...

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Editorials 315 Public policy-making is an increasingly complex undertaking in a globalizing world, especially as policy domains formerly viewed in isolation become more intertwined. This complexity marks the interplay between health, intellectual property and trade policies. Can such interplay be managed so as to enhance the discovery, development and delivery of medical technologies for better...

Innovation is fundamental for economic catching-up and raising living standards. Evidence demonstrate a virtuous circle in which R&D spending, innovation, productivity, and per capita income mutually reinforce each other and lead to long-term, sustained growth rates and may foster job creation. Previous evidence highlights that Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has great potential to benefi...

There are increasing criticisms of dominant models for scaling up health systems in developing countries and a recognition that approaches are needed that better take into account the complexity of health interventions. Since Reform and Opening in the late 1970s, Chinese government has managed complex, rapid and intersecting reforms across many policy areas. As with reforms in other policy area...