We construct a tractable general equilibrium model of cumulative innovation and growth, in which new ideas strictly improve upon frontier technologies, and productivity improvements are drawn in a stochastic manner. The presence of positive knowledge spillovers implies that the decentralized...

This paper studies the incentives that developing countries have to protect intellectual properties rights (IPR). On the one hand, free-riding on rich countries technology reduces their investment cost in R&D. On the other hand, firm that violates IPR cannot legally export in a country that...

Recent empirical studies suggest a need for a flexible patent regime responding to industry characteristics. In practice, sector-specific modifications of patent strength already exist but lack theoretical foundation. This paper intends to make up for this neglect by scrutinizing in what...

In many countries entrepreneurship is promoted through tax reductions for small businesses and by various government support schemes. We analyze the effects of such policies to subsidize small businesses in a setting where both the risk-return characteristics of the selected innovation project...

It has been argued that monetary incentives restrain individual creativity and hamper performance in jobs requiring out of the box thinking. This paper reports from an experiment designed to test if the negative incentive effect is present also when individuals work together to solve such...

By merging individual data on valuable patents granted in Prussia in the late nineteenth century with county level information on literacy and income tax revenues we show that increases in the stock of human capital not only improved workers’ productivity but also accelerated innovative...

The relationship between innovation and CSR has so far resulted in studies that 1) mainly analyze the integration of CSR into the business as a generator of innovations and thus of economic performance, or 2) focus on the strategic dimensions of environmental innovation. Few publications examine...

While the history of luxury, as a craft activity, is a very long one, the luxury goods industry as we currently know it, is relatively young. At the end of the 19th century some entrepreneurs created a new industrial logic focused on luxury goods. Nicole-Barbe Ponsardin-Cliquot (Champagne),...

Two eras can be distinguished in the history of innovation: era of inventor and era of researcher, even if they recover one another partially. During the first era R&D was rather ?reactive?; the inventor imagining solutions to technical problems, especially in manufactures (textile, steam and...

We empirically investigate whether the persistence of politicians in political institutions affects the innovation activity of firms. We use 12,000 firm-level observations from three waves of the Italian Observatory over Small and Medium Enterprises, and introduce a measure of political...