The German law on employees' inventions requires employees to report to their employer any invention made in relation with the work contract. An employer claiming the right to the invention is obliged to pay a compensation to the employee. Up to now, this compensation is a matter of...

We analyze the legal reform concerning employees' inventions in Germany. Using a simple principal-agent model, we derive a unique efficient payment scheme: a bonus which is contingent on the project value. We demonstrate that the old German law creates inefficient incentives. However, the new...

Dieser Beitrag analysiert die geplante und zum Teil schon verwirklichte Reform des Gesetzes über Arbeitnehmererfindungen (ArbEG). Im Mittelpunkt der Analyse stehen die Vergütungen, die Arbeitgeber an einen Mitarbeiter zu zahlen haben, wenn sie dessen Erfindung in Anspruch nehmen. Bisher wurde...

This paper presents a modification of the inspection game: The "Bayesian Monitoring" model rests on the assumption that judges are interested in enforcing compliant behavior and making correct decisions. They may base their judgements on an informative but imperfect signal which can be generated...

The Condorcet jury-theorem is derived from the implicit assumption that jury members may only commit one type of error. In binary decision situations however, two error types may occur, the probability of which is independent of each other. Taking this into account leads to a generalization of...

The paper provides an introduction to market economy. In comparison to other economic systems, the most important difference appears to be the existence of market prices which are created spontaneously. Hence, prices do not only provide an incentive system, but also aggregate dispersed...

Legal Cost Insurance (LCI) is not only a device to reallocate risk, but also to enhance an insured's position in a settlement negotiation. The paper points out that this function of LCI is especially important in cases that have a negative expected value for potential plaintiffs. Hence LCI is of...