The economics of ideas and intellectual property

Michele Boldrin () and David K. Levine

No 357, Staff Report from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Abstract: Innovation and the adoption of new ideas are fundamental to economic progress. Here we examine the underlying economics of the market for ideas. From a positive perspective, we examine how such markets function with and without government intervention. From a normative perspective, we examine the pitfalls of existing institutions, and how they might be improved. We highlight recent research by ourselves and others challenging the notion that government awards of monopoly through patents and copyright are ?the way? to provide appropriate incentives for innovation.

Keywords: Technological innovations; Intellectual property (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ino and nep-tid
Date: 2005
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr357.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Economics of Ideas and Intellectual Property (2004)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedmsr:357

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/pubs/

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff Report from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Diane Rosenberger ().