From Personal to Impersonal Exchange in Ideas

Eskil Ullberg ()
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Eskil Ullberg: George Mason University

Chapter Chapter 1 in Trade in Ideas, 2012, pp 1-33 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Technology – human ideas on using the laws of nature – has always been at the heart of economic development. With the patent system, first introduced in Venice in 1474, technical ideas became tradable in their own rights. Such exchange promises gains in impersonal markets based on the patents, changing the economic organization, and shifting the risk-bearing and risk-sharing between specialized firms for invention, trading/investment, innovation, and customers resulting in a potentially more efficient sharing of risk in the economic system. Previous discussion has mainly treated technological inventions and innovation as being coordinated within a hierarchy. This study is a dual study of mechanisms and contract for coordination between such hierarchies. This is a political economic problem, where government subsidies and secrecy are replaced by markets (using excluding and transferrable rights for economic gains) and openness (publication of the ideas for social gains) as policy to achieve a higher growth and access to technical knowledge in the economic system. The performance and behavioral characteristics of such markets in patents with prices are investigated using experimental economics. Chapter 1 outlines the general economic proposition and discusses the parameterization of the exchange markets, based on principles of the patent system and practices of individuals, firms, and nations exchanging technology since the conception of the patent system.

Keywords: Market Access; Patent System; Patent Office; Patent Holder; Linear Contract (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:innchp:978-1-4614-1272-4_1

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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-1272-4_1

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