Economic growth thus far has been closely linked to the bulk conversion of energy stored in carbon based fuels (wood, coal, oil, natural gas) into useful work. Burning such fuels gives rise to CO2-emissions. These emissions, together with other greenhouse gasses (GHG's) like methane, are now...

This paper analyses the requirements for a social welfare-optimized transition path toward a carbon-free economy, focusing particularly on the role of R&D and other technological measures to achieve timely supply-side transformations in the global production regime that will avert catastrophic...

The research reported here gives priority to understanding the inter-temporal resource allocation requirements of a program of technological changes that could halt global warming by completing the transition to a "green" (zero net CO2- emission) production regime within the possibly brief...

This short paper on a very big subject deals with a worry - a worry that the present economic crisis is likely to contribute to the already-existing temptations of governmental and private actors alike to behave in a time-inconsistent fashion when responding to the challenge of climate change....

There are three analytically distinct layers of the phenomenon that has been labeled 'the anticommons' and indicted as a potential impediment to innovation resulting from patenting and enforcement of IPR obtained on academic research results. This paper distinguishes among 'search costs',...

Evidence on the "funding gap" for investment innovation is surveyed. The focus is on financial market reasons for underinvestment that exist even when externality-induced underinvestment is absent. We conclude that while small and new innovative firms experience high costs of capital that are...

This paper explores the characteristics of 238 patents on 94 “inventions” contributed by major multinational innovators to the “Eco-Patent Commons”, which provides royalty-free access to third parties to patented climate change related innovations. By comparing the pledged patents to...

This paper surveys what we know about the internationalization of business R&D spending. I examine three specific questions about the global changes in R&D activity: First, what is the evidence that R&D is becoming more internationalized (more footloose)? Second, what are the factors that...

Two court decisions in the 1990s are widely viewed as having opened the door to a flood of business method and financial patents at the US Patent and Trademark Office, and to have also impacted other patent offices around the world. A number of scholars, both legal and economic, have critiqued...

Italian manufacturing firms have been losing ground with respect to many of their European competitors. This paper presents some empirical evidence on the effects of innovation on employment growth and therefore on firms' productivity with the goal of understanding the roots of such poor...