In order to accelerate knowledge accumulation and technical progress, governments introduced patent systems to encourage inventors to share their ideas, discoveries, and inventions with the public.
By Stuart V. Craig, Keith Marzilli Ericson, and Amanda Starc
We examined how prices vary between insurers for the same procedure at the same hospital, using a dataset of all commercial Massachusetts hospital claims.
Iain Cockburn, Tim Wilsdon, Michele Pistollato, Rajini Jayasuriya, and Thomas Watson
The 1995 TRIPS Agreement between member states of the World Trade Organization (WTO) defines minimum standards of intellectual property (IP) protection and enforcement.
Insurers heavily subsidize the cost of ivermectin prescriptions for COVID, despite the lack of evidence that ivermectin is effective for COVID. In a new paper, published in JAMA, Questrom professor and TPRI co-lead Rena Conti with colleagues Kao-Ping Chua and Nora Becker (both University of Michigan) estimate that U.S. insurers may have wasted $2.5 million on these drugs in the week of August 13, 2021 alone.
James Bessen, Erich Denk, Joowon Kim, Cesare Righi
This paper reports the first recent estimates of trends in the displacement of industry-leading firms. Displacement hazards rose for several decades since 1970 but have declined sharply since 2000. Using a production function-based model to explore the role of investments, acquisitions, and lobbying, we find that investments by dominant firms in intangibles, especially software, are distinctly associated with greater persistence and reduced leapfrogging.
William E. Kovacic, Robert C. Marshall, and Michael J. Meurer
New research arguing for new policies to address serial collusion in various industries, including guidance to antitrust enforcers about how to better understand and combat serial collusion facilitated by patents.