Contrary to some of the leading critiques of neoclassical theory, I argue that this theoretical framework can incorporate the moral dimension into the modeling of economic agents when the consequences of their choices are not answerable to market forces. Neoclassical theory, broadly defined,...

We develop an oligopoly model in which firms facing unionised domestic labor markets choose between producing an intermediate good in-house and outsourcing it to a nonunionised foreign supplier that makes a relationship-specific investment in developing the intermediate. The paper sheds light on...

We present a dynamic model in which an employee of a firm searches for business projects in a changing environment. It is costly to induce the employee who found a successful project in the past period to search for a new project. Past success can therefore result in profitreducing corporate...

We develop a theory of commercialization mode (entry or sale) of entrepreneurial inventions into oligopoly, and show that an invention of higher quality is more likely to be sold (or licensed) to an incumbent due to strategic product market effects on the sales price. Moreover, preemptive...

The conventional wisdom is that the formation of patent pools is welfare enhancing when patents are complementary, since the pool avoids a double-marginalization problem associated with independent licensing. This conventional wisdom relies on the effects that pooling has on downstream prices....

We develop a theory of innovation for entry and sale into oligopoly, and show that inventions of higher quality are more likely to be sold (or licensed) to an incumbent due to strategic product market effects on the sales price. Such preemptive acquisitions by incumbents are shown to stimulate...

When and how do entrepreneurs sell their inventions? To address this issue, we develop an endogenous entry-sale asymmetric information oligopoly model. We show that lowquality inventions are sold directly or used for entry. Inventors who sell post-entry use entry to credibly reveal information...

In Chapter 2 we saw that the most economical locations for transactions in a task network are the so-called thin crossing points—places where transfers are easy to define, count and pay for. However, in many places in the task network, transfers of material, energy, and information are so...

Functional analysis as set forth in the last chapter decomposes a technical system into functional components that do things to advance the system’s purpose and the goals of its designers. Functional analysis in turn can be used to construct value structure maps of technical systems. Such maps...