Patents and Research Investments: Assessing the Empirical Evidence

Eric Budish, Benjamin N. Roin and Heidi Williams ()

No 21889, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: A well-developed theoretical literature — dating back at least to Nordhaus (1969) — has analyzed optimal patent policy design. We re-present the core trade-off of the Nordhaus model and highlight an empirical question which emerges from the Nordhaus framework as a key input into optimal patent policy design: namely, what is the elasticity of R&D investment with respect to the patent term? We then review the — surprisingly small — body of empirical evidence that has been developed on this question over the nearly half century since the publication of Nordhaus's book.

JEL-codes: O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-cse, nep-ino, nep-ipr and nep-pr~
Note: IO LE PE PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Published as Eric Budish & Benjamin N. Roin & Heidi Williams, 2016. "Patents and Research Investments: Assessing the Empirical Evidence," American Economic Review, vol 106(5), pages 183-187.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w21889.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Patents and Research Investments: Assessing the Empirical Evidence (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21889

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w21889

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().