This book contributes fresh theoretical and empirical evidence on competitiveness and growth in connection with the commitment made by European leaders at the Lisbon Summit in 2000 to ‘render the European Union the most competitive and dynamic knowledge based economy in the world by 2010,...

This paper examines how patent renewal fees may be restructured to discourage low-value patents with the goal of reducing the burden on patent offices without unduly impairing innovation incentives. We depart from Pakes’ (1986, Econometrica, <Emphasis Type="Bold">54, 755–784) real-option model by moving to an...</emphasis>

In this paper, we address the problem of patent valuation. With this aim in view, we focus on the feasibility of a patent rating system. This leads us to develop a structural model of patent renewal decisions based on real options that links patent renewals and patent value and to estimate it on...

This article aims at estimating the optimal profile of renewal fees patent offices should implement. It is at the crossroad of two strands of literature. The first strand is the theoretical literature analysing renewal fees as an optimal revelation mechanism. The second strand is the econometric...

Le Tribunal de Première Instance des Communautés Européennes (TPICE) a récemment rétorqué trois vetos des autorités communautaires de la concurrence. Au-delà du camouflet que représentent ces décisions, c'est principalement l'insuffisance de preuves et la faiblesse de l'analyse...

This article deals with the impact of legislation in the seed sector on incentives for variety creation. The first category of rules consists in intellectual property rights and is intended to address a problem of sequential innovation and R&D investments. The second category concerns commercial...

This article deals with the incidence of consumers? heterogeneity on the formation of hedonic price functions with a focus on the emergence of market segmentation. Two major points are outlined: (i) in the presence of group-wise heterogeneity, consumers are endogenously gathered on intervals of...

The article highlights the role of heterogeneity in the formation of hedonic prices. The article distinguishes between continuous and groupwise heterogeneity. The distinction helps understanding two important points. First, the analysis of market equilibrium with groupwise heterogeneity makes...

The Arrow and Fisher [1974] model of environmental preservation with irreversibility and uncertainty is reconsidered in the perspective of the real option theory. Thanks to this approach, an extension of the model to the continuous time case with a partial exploitation of non renewable resources...