Intellectual Property: When Is It the Best Incentive System?

Nancy Gallini () and Suzanne Scotchmer

Law and Economics from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Our objective in this paper is to review what economists have said about incentive schemes to promote R&D, including intellectual property. While we focus on environments in which other forms of protection are not available, we note that other protections can obviate the need for any formal reward system. In Section II, we compare intellectual property to alternative incentive schemes. In Section III we review optimal design issues for intellectual property, especially the question of patent breadth, and in Section IV we turn to the special problems that arise when innovation is cumulative. In Section V, we summarize the arguments for and against intellectual property. We comment on whether the design recommendations of economists can actually be implemented, and argue that IP regimes should be designed so that the subject matter of each one has relatively homogeneous needs for protection.

JEL-codes: K3 L5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2002-01-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-hpe, nep-law, nep-mic and nep-tid
Note: 26 pages, Acrobat .pdf
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (135)

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https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/le/papers/0201/0201001.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Intellectual Property: When is it the Best Incentive System? (2003)
Chapter: Intellectual Property: When Is It the Best Incentive System? (2002)
Working Paper: Intellectual Property: When Is It the Best Incentive System? (2001)
Working Paper: Intellectual Property: When Is It the Best Incentive System? (2001)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwple:0201001

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