Innovative Activity and Sunk Cost

Todd Kaplan, I. Luski and David Wettstein ()

Working Papers from Tel Aviv

Abstract: We analyze a patent race where the first innovator receives a time-dependent reward while all firms incur costs. When firms are identical, there is a unique, symmetric, mixed-strategy equilibrium that yields zero expected profits for all firms. Furthermore, the expected innovation time is an increasing function of the number of firms and a decreasing function of the size of the reward. When one firm has a higher reward than another, it is more likely to win. Although similar to an all-pay auction, our approach may yield both similar and qualitatively different behavior.

Keywords: INNOVATIONS; PATENTS; COSTS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O32 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2000
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Journal Article: Innovative activity and sunk cost (2003)
Working Paper: Innovative Activity and Sunk Cost (2000)
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