This study explores the effects of patent protection in a distance-to-frontier R&D-based growth model with financial frictions. We find that whether stronger patent protection stimulates or stifles innovation depends on credit constraints faced by R&D entrepreneurs. When credit constraints are non-binding (binding), strengthening patent protection stimulates (stifles) R&D. The overall effect of...

We revisit the "paradox of openness" in the literature which consists of two conflicting views on the link between patenting and open innovation—the spillover prevention and the organisational openness views. We use the data from the Survey of Innovation and Patent Use and the Community Innovation Survey (CIS6) in the UK to assess the empirical support for the distinct predictions of these theo...

The economic implications of international patent harmonization have attracted little empirical scrutiny. Based on patent application and renewal data in major European countries since the early 1980s, this paper examines the empirical relationship between international patenting, R&D, and “trade flows” of patent rights across national borders. The analysis reveals a substantial patent “trade i...

We focus on downstream uses that combine multiple intellectual property rights and examine the e¤ects of introducing an intellectual property clearinghouse that reduces transaction costs associated with licensing. We show that this causes equilibrium royalties to rise in some cases and may harm licensors because clearinghouse by itself does not eliminate the ‘tragedy of the anticommons’. Downst...

This paper develops a model for analyzing the costs and benefits of intellectual property enforcement in LDCs. The North is more productive than the South and is the only source of innovator. There are two types of goods, and each bloc has a comparative advantage in producing a specific type of good. If comparative advantage is strong enough, even under piracy there are goods that the South wil...

We focus on downstream uses that combine multiple intellectual property rights and examine the e¤ects of introducing an intellectual property clearinghouse. We identify the two sometimes con‡icting function of clearinhouses: transaction costs reduction and coordination. We show that reduction in transaction costs causes licensors to increase royalties in some cases and makes them worse o¤ due t...

We analyse optimal pricing and quality of a monopolistic journal and the optimality of open access in a two-sided model. The predominant aspect of the model that determines the quality levels at which open access is optimal is the nature of the (non-linear) externalities between readers and authors in a journal. We show that there exist scenarios in which open access is a feature of high-qualit...

Motivated by the central role of voluntary knowledge disclosure in ensuring cumulative progress, this paper evaluates the conditions supporting the disclosure of privately funded new knowledge through scientific publication, patenting, or both. We ground our analysis in the incentives facing researchers and their funders: scientists have incentives to disclose discoveries through scientific pub...

This paper investigates whether the distinction between patent citations added by the inventor or the examiner is relevant for the issue of geographical concentration of knowledge flows (as embodied in citations). The distinction between inventor and examiner citations enables us to work with a more refined citation indicator of knowledge flows. We use information in the search reports of paten...

This paper studies the puzzle of what caused the surge in US patenting in the 1980s. I first argue that, under the standard view of patents, where value depends only on the appropriable rents created by the patent's exclusive property rights over related technologies and product markets, this puzzle cannot be solved. I then adopt an alternative theory, based on a growing legal literature, where...