Cost Reduction, Licensing and Incentive to Innovate: A Note

In this Note we consider an economy composed by two firms; a leader and a follower, that invest in R&D for process innovations. Competition to innovate is usually modelled as a two stage game. In the first stage of the game both firms simultaneously reduces their production costs. In the second stage the firms compete la Stackelberg and it is possible to prove that the profits of one of the two firms (and total profits) might decrease in a range of parameters. Then we consider the possibility of technology transfer from the leader that has the most productive technology to the follower under licensing by means of a fixed fee and of a royalty. It is possible to prove that under licensing total profits will increase in some range of parameters above mentioned in comparison to the pre-innovation case.