In this paper, we study the impact of altruism on an interaction between a samaritan and a recipient/parasite in the frame of Buchanan's samaritan's dilemma (1975). We show that, as soon as altruism reaches a certain threshold, the equilibrium of the game corresponds to the situation Buchanan...

The prolific (serial) inventors set up the core of the paper. Prolific inventors tend to have a high productivity in terms of inventions (patents) having in general more economic value. The capacity to produce a lot of inventions (patents) is termed “prolificness”. We want to deepen our...

This paper makes the case that the biomedical workforce in the United States is characterized by positive feedbacks. The paper begins by setting out background information on (1) the way in which research is structured in the biomedical sciences; (2) the reward structure among biomedical...

Scientific research has properties of a public good; there are few monetary incentives for individuals to undertake basic research and the conventional wisdom is that the market, if left to its own devices, would under- invest in research in terms of social benefits relative to social costs. Thus...

The paper proposes an original survey on the evolution of the concept of technological knowledge and of its production, as well as of its operational translations in the empirical literature. We move from the former notion of knowledge capital stock, implying a linear approach to the process of...

This paper examines a new model of credit risk measurement, the Variance Gamma- Merton one, which seems to be adequate for describing single default occurrence and default correlation in turbulent times. It is based on the notion of business time. Business time runs faster than calendar time...