We explore the dynamic evolution of property rights regimes in R&D alliances using the incomplete contract approach pioneered by Grossman, Hart, and Moore. In contrast to the standard analysis, the productive asset is an excludable public good such as a patent. Moreover, both firms can decide whether to disclose their know-how and invest effort. Know-how that has once been released cannot be co...

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This paper views authority as the right to undertake decisions that impose externalities on other members of the organization. When only decision rights can be contractually assigned to one of the organization’s stakeholders, the optimal assignment minimizes the resulting inefficiencies by giving control rights to the party with the highest stake in the organization’s decisions. Under asymmetri...

The paving of the way for a new climate agreement has turned out to be extremely challenging. The negotiators struggle to make the required emissions reductions binding under international law and to agree on burden-sharing amongst nations. Despite the fact that the G8 (Major Economics Forum 2009 ) as well as the Copenhagen Accord (UNFCCC 2010 ) refer to the 2°C target, the current pledges of t...

The Cooperative Water Allocation Model (CWAM) is designed within a general mathematical programming framework for modeling equitable and efficient water allocation among competing users at the basin level and applied to a large-scale water allocation problem in the South Saskatchewan River Basin located in southern Alberta, Canada. This comprehensive model consists of two main steps: initial wa...

This paper analyzes how property rights affect the allocation of firms’ available resources among different types of assets. In particular, we investigate empirically for a large number of countries whether firms in environments with more secure property rights allocate available resources more towards intangible assets and consequentially grow faster. We find that improved asset allocation due...

Developing a pipeline risk assessment tool in the upstream oil and gas industry can be a difficult process. Regardless of the intent (integrity management, resource allocation, compliance etc.), challenges in the form of resource limitations and data constraints need to be overcome to develop a functional risk assessment tool. This paper describes Talisman Energy’s experience in developing an i...