Uncertainty is essential in collaborative investment in R&D, especially for new production development (NPD). So, commitments (either formal contracts or informal communications) among members in an R&D alliance are often presented to deal with uncertainty. But after uncertainty is realized,...

This paper puts forth a unified theory of growth that captures a number of relevant features of countries transitions from stagnant, predominantly rural economies to vibrant, industrialized economies that have been overlooked by the literature. In our theory, increasing variety of consumer goods...

A market-size-only theory of industrialization cannot explain why England developed nearly two centuries before China. One shortcoming of such a theory is its exclusive focus on producers. We show that once we incorporate the incentives of factor suppliers' organizations such as craft guilds,...

Why do some countries industrialize much earlier than others? One widely-accepted answer is that markets need to be large enough for producers to find it profitable to bear the fixed cost of introducing modern technologies. This insight, however, has limited explanatory power, as illustrated by...

This paper provides formal treatment to the idea of patenting as a form of market stealing between R&D firms. It extends the creative destruction literature by allowing innovations to build off each other forming a network of ideas. Patent citations keep track of this network. The theory maps...

We study a model where innovation comes in two varieties: improvements on existing products, and new products that expand the scope of a technology. We make this distinction in order to highlight how market structure can determine not only the quantity of innovation but also its direction. We...

A number of studies show that entrepreneurial households face a large amount of unvidersifiable risk. This paper studies the effects of this risk on the relationship between uncertainty, innovation and investment dynamics. In the first part of the paper we develop a simple model of a risk averse...