Psychology studies have for some time shown that, as humans, we tend to recognise the ownership of ideas and that the unauthorised use of others’ ideas is frowned upon (Olson and Shaw, 2011). Morally, a person is often said to have a natural right to the product of their brain (Vaver, 1990)....

Can artificial intelligence (AI) uncover new ideas? As machines are learning fast and becoming increasingly intelligent, can AI not only automate the production function of goods and services, but also of ideas? Economic growth arises from people creating ideas, and thus an affirmative answer to...

I develop an empirical model of idea generation contests with heterogeneous participants and endogenous entry, fit the model to data from a platform used by major advertisers, and simulate counterfactual contest designs. The empirical model resolves ambiguous predictions yielded by contest...