This is a first report from a larger study of inventive activity of U.S. firms and some of its consequences. It reports on the relationship between patents applied for and R&D expenditures based on data for 121 large corporations covering the 1968-1975 period. The main conclusion is that there...

Our calculations indicate that currently proposed U.S. policies to reduce pharmaceutical prices, though particularly beneficial for low-income and elderly populations, could dramatically reduce firms' investment in highly welfare-improving R&D. The U.S. subsidizes the worldwide pharmaceutical...

The purpose of this paper is to present and estimate a model which allows one to use the recently computerized U.S. Patent Office's data base to identify when and where changes in inventive output have occurred. The model assumes a firm which chooses a research strategy to maximize the expected...