This paper provides an overview of the relationship between entrepreneurship university spin-off activity and economic growth. It suggests the need for a diversified university structure, and that spin-offs are a misleading measure of the most important activity for technology transfer which remains the training and education of highly qualified scientists and technologists. It argues that a li...

This paper analyses the policy implications of licensing between producers of differentiated goods. We consider and compare two-part tariff, fixed fee, royalty and collusive licensing contracts. Under the optimal licensing policy, there will be no technology transfers if the innovation size is sufficiently small and degree of product differentiation is sufficiently low. On the other hand, licen...

I analyze the welfare implications of protecting intellectual property rights (IPRs) in developing countries through its impact on innovation, market structure, and technology transfer. FDI, tariffs, and cooperation are introduced to the strategic IPR literature. In a North-South framework, the Southern government sets the IPR policy strategically by anticipating the Northern firm’s decision on...

A Schumpeterian growth model is constructed where R&D firms innovate to produce better versions of the products or imitate to copy existing innovations. Because firms cannot use their innovations or imitations as collateral, they finance their investment by issuing shares. Households save by purchasing these shares. The government affects the level of profits through competition policy. The mai...

Rates of electronic information sharing and interoperability among hospitals remain low despite government investments exceeding $30 billion. Using a network economics framework, I show that low rates are driven by two factors. First, hospitals with weak market power avoid interoperability to keep patients from going elsewhere for care. Second, even if hospitals value interoperability, heteroge...

This article analyses the advantages and disadvantages of the different patent systems that coexist in Europe and examines the recently launched proposal for a European Council Regulation on the Community patent in light of the shortcoming of the existing systems. The European Commission has sought the coexistent of the Community, European and national patent systems. This option does not elimi...

How is economic policy made? In this paper we study a key determinant of the answer to the question: lobbying by firms. Estimating a binary choice model of firm behavior, we find significant evidence for the idea that barriers to entry induce persistence in lobbying. The existence of these costs is further confirmed in studying how firms responded to a particular policy change: the expiration o...

The paper analyses the timing of spontaneous environmental innovation when second-mover advantages, arising from the expectation of declining investment costs, increase the option value of waiting created by investment irreversibility and uncertainty about private payoffs. We then focus on the design of public subsidies aimed at bridging the gap between the spontaneous time of technological cha...