This article analyzes the "escape from competition effect" in a step-by-step framework in which a succesful firm may either leapfrog the previous leader or catch-up its technology. Innovation and growth are affected by both the intensity of competition and the probability of leapfrogging.

The Relations Between Science and Technology: what Implications for Public Policy? This article proposes an analysis of the science-technology interactions. The first part is historical and focuses on the transformations that resulted from the passage of a prescriptive knowledge (techniques) to...

This paper explores a licensor's choice between charging a per-unit royalty or a …fixed fee when her innovation is covered by a weak patent, i.e. a patent that is likely to be invali- dated by a court if challenged. Using a general model where the nature of competition is not speci…ed, we show...

In this paper we examine the implications of uncertainty over patent validity on patentholders' licensing strategies. Two licensing mechanisms are examined: per-unit royalty and up-front fee.We provide conditions under which uncertain patents are licensed in order to avoid patent litigation. It...

In this paper, we revisit the issue of licensing ‘weak' patents under the shadow of litigation. Departing from the seminal paper by Farrell and Shapiro [2008], we consider innovations of any size and not only ‘small' innovations, and we allow the number of licensees to be less than the...

The evaluation of social risk equity for alternative probability distributions over the potential sets of fatalities is analyzed axiomatically. Fishburn and Straffin [Equity considerations in public risks valuation, Operatons Research 37 (1999), 229-239] have identified a necessary and...

This paper presents an axiomatic model of decision making under uncertainty which incorporates objective but imprecise information. Information is assumed to take the form of a probability-possibility set, that is, a set $P$ of probability measures on the state space. The decision maker is told...

We study the Full Bayesian Updating rule for convex capacities. Following a route suggested by Jaffray (1992), we define some properties one may want to impose on the updating process, and identify the classes of (convex and strictly positive) capacities that satisfy these properties for the...

This paper presents an axiomatic model of decision making which incorporates objective but imprecise information. We axiomatize a decision criterion of the multiple priors (or maxmin expected utility) type. The model achieves two primary objectives. First, it explains how subjective belief...

L'article analyse les complémentarités et les tensions entre la concurrence et l'innovation tant du point de vue des instruments d'analyse que du point de vue des politiques économiques.