The standard result in patent policy, as demonstrated by Gilbert and Shapiro (1990), is that infinitely lived but very narrow patents are optimal as deadweight losses are minimized and spread through time, but inventors can still recover their R&D expenditures. By extending their innovative...

A socially optimal structure of application and renewal fees for patents would encourage the maximal number of applications while reducing effective patent length. We find, however, that when patent offices are required to be self-funding, resource constraints can distort this fee structure....

Preface -- Introduction -- What is disruption? -- Sources of disruption -- Predicting disruption -- Managing disruption -- Self-disruption -- Insuring against disruption -- Re-examining disruption -- Future of disruption -- Notes -- Index

This paper evaluates whether the relative concentration of funding for small, research-oriented firms in a small number of high-technology industries is related to differences across industries in the appropriability level facing small firms. We exploit a novel test based on the relationship...