ANNE BARRON, London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - Department of Law
Email: A.Barron@lse.ac.uk

The dominant explanatory/justificatory framework informing scholarly commentary on copyright law, policy and theory today - certainly in the US - is law and economics. From this perspective, copyright law exists to underpin markets in certain categories of 'information good' (copyright works). These markets in turn function to ensure that the private costs and benefits of information production and consumption line up (more or less) with the social costs and benefits of these activities, ie that 'free-riding' on the efforts of information producers is (more or less) curtailed. A widely held view is that this tradition of what might be called 'copyright-law-and-economics' is now deeply divided - between adherents to what Glynn Lunney has called 'copyright's incentives-access paradigm' on the one hand, and proponents of what Mark Lemley has called the 'full value' or 'absolute protection' paradigm on the other. Absolute protection theorists tend towards the view that all uses of copyright works should be capable of being controlled (and so priced) by the right-owner; incentives-access theorists distinguish between uses the control of which would affect the information producer's incentives ex ante, and those that would not, and recommend that copyright protection should extend to the former category only. This paper examines the features that are said to distinguish the two paradigms from each other, focusing especially on the approach each recommends to copyright's scope (ie the issue of what uses of copyright works properly constitute copyright infringements). Particular attention is paid to the efforts of critical economists of intellectual property law such as Lemley and Brett Frischmann to retrieve and advance versions of the incentives-access paradigm with a view to counteracting the disadvantages for society they believe are associated with the absolute protection paradigm. Ultimately, however, I conclude that too much has been made of the distinction, and that the debate over which paradigm should have priority in determining the contours of copyright policy distracts attention from a more fundamental issue - the hegemony of economic analysis generally in organising the conceptual and normative universe of legal scholars working in this area. Thus while sympathetic to the impulse underlying the efforts of Lemley and Frischmann - a concern to resist the seemingly relentless expansion of copyright towards the horizon of absolute right-holder control of all uses of copyright material - I argue that their lingering adherence to the presuppositions of economic analysis has stymied their well-meaning efforts to account for the social value of 'information' in terms distinct from the merely economic measure of price. My overall aim here is to suggest that, because of its presuppositions, economic analysis - in whatever paradigm it may be packaged - offers at best a blinkered perspective on both copyright law and the field of social life that copyright law affects. I conclude by proposing Jurgen Habermas's social theory as an alternative framework in relation to which critics of copyright expansionism might fruitfully orient themselves in the future.

DARON ACEMOGLU, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Department of Economics, Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Email: daron@mit.edu
KOSTAS BIMPIKIS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Operations Research Center
Email: kostasb@mit.edu
ASUMAN E. OZDAGLAR, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Email: asuman@mit.edu

This paper studies a simple model of experimentation and innovation. Our analysis suggests that patents may improve the allocation of resources by encouraging rapid experimentation and efficient ex post transfer of knowledge across firms. Each firm receives a private signal on the success probability of one of many potential research projects and decides when and which project to implement. A successful innovation can be copied by other firms. Symmetric equilibria (where actions do not depend on the identity of the firm) always involve delayed and staggered experimentation, whereas the optimal allocation never involves delays and may involve simultaneous rather than staggered experimentation. The social cost of insufficient experimentation can be arbitrarily large. Appropriately-designed patents can implement the socially optimal allocation (in all equilibria). In contrast to patents, subsidies to experimentation, research, or innovation cannot typically achieve this objective. We also show that when signal quality differs across firms, the equilibrium may involve a nonmonotonicity, whereby players with stronger signals may experiment after those with weaker signals. We show that in this more general environment patents again encourage experimentation and reduce delays.

CHRISTOPH GRIMPE, Center for European Economic Research (ZEW), Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) - Faculty of Business and Economics (FBE), University of Zurich - Institute of Strategy and Business Economics (ISU)
Email: grimpe@zew.de
KATRIN HUSSINGER, Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), University of Maastricht - Department of Organization & Strategy, Catholic University of Leuven (KUL)
Email: katrin.hussinger@econ.kuleuven.ac.be

Literature has identified formal and informal channels in university technology transfer. While formal technology transfer typically involves a legal contract on a patent or on collaborative research activities, informal transfer channels refer to personal contacts and hence to the tacit dimension of knowledge transfer. Research is, however, scarce regarding the interaction of formal and informal transfer mechanisms. In this paper, we analyze whether these activities are mutually reinforcing, i.e. complementary. Our analysis is based on a comprehensive dataset of more than 2,000 German manufacturing firms. We perform direct and indirect tests for the complementarity of formal and informal technology transfer. Our results confirm a complementary relationship: using both transfer channels contributes to higher innovation performance. The management of the firm should therefore strive to maintain close informal relationships with universities to realize the full potential of formal technology transfer.

SHUBHAM YOGI, Gujarat National Law University
Email: shubhamyogi@hotmail.com

Internet and telecommunication services are now available all over the world, and emphatically penetrating, still. Such growth in infrastructure invites interest of consumers and producers into foreign markets, which are not physically approachable, but virtually penetrable. Internet trade has grown in leaps and bounds; however, it has not reached the levels it can with the technology available today and the number of consumers and producers willing to trade. The primary reason for the situation is half-belief and distrust towards a foreign land and its products or its investors and consumers. Any dispute between transacting parties is still not resolved at party-to-party level and may reach the highest Appellate Adjudication levels of either region. Dispute resolution has become a part of State policy and the attitude towards it is also driven by national or domestic ideologies. Consequently, resolution of similar disputes in different societies becomes a hindrance to intended interaction over trade and commerce. Although, there have been attempts to create common resolution institutions and uniform laws, private disputes are either not resolved because of geographical differences or are lumped for the same reason.

The convenience that electronic commerce offered and by which it lured the .dot com era has negligently been ignored. Any trader worth his salt will ensure enforceability of contractual obligations before raising hopes on attainable profits. Since the resolution practices adopted by international e-traders prove to be difficult to execute by the aggrieved party, many prospective transactions are not even considered. A system of decentralized resolution mechanism will conserve the convenience offered by e-commerce and will attract many more prospective traders. A system which can make the geographical differences inconsequential for fair enforcement of contractual obligations will bring back the convenience of trading across the seas.

An ODR System could be an obvious choice for such a suggestion. However, a step-resolution mechanism, inclusive of party participation in decision making and guided negotiations and final adjudicatory options, will prove to be more viable than an ODR System. An organisation to ensure that conflicts are dissolved before they become disputes is required. Trading time and costs of resolution will be some of the starting few profits this system could offer immediately.

The paper is an attempt to conceptualise such an organisation by identifying the various factors involved in the functioning and operations of this organisation.

P. K. MISHRA, Institute of Technical Education and Research (ITER)
Email: pkm_iter@hotmail.com

This paper studies the economic growth implications of financial innovations that emerge in more sophisticated and complete financial markets. Financial innovations in the form of new financial instruments, services, institutions, technologies, and markets mobilise financial surpluses from ultimate savers and channelizes them into most productive investment avenues thereby raising the rate of capital accumulation, and hence, the rate of economic growth.

DIPIKA DAS, Reserve Bank of India
Email: ddas@rbi.org.in

Although, there are many studies undertaken to examine the productivity in Indian industry in the post reform period, there is limited literature on variation in productivity at different regions/states of India. In this paper, productivity of 15 major states of India is compared based on Annual Survey of Industries data from 1979-80 to 2003-04. Since the impact of reform is not same for different types of industries; industries have been categorized into three categories - Traditional, Basic and High-Tech industries and production frontier has been estimated and productivity have been computed for the three categories separately. I have constructed Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) along with its decomposition - OTEC (Overall Technical Efficiency Change Index), PEC (Pure Efficiency Change Index), SEC (Scale Efficiency Index) and TECH (Technical Change Index) for 25 years and for 15 major states of India for each category of industries - Traditional, Basic and High-tech.

From efficiency results, it can be observed that, basic industry is the most inefficient industry in terms of overall technical efficiency. However, in terms of scale efficiency, basic industry is the most efficient industry and traditional industry is the most inefficient industry. But, the scale efficiency of traditional industry has improved after reform.

From MPI results, it is observed that regional differences in TFP growth persist and the variation has increased in the post-reform period. However, variation in TFP growth is due to increased variability in the rate of technical progress across states in the post-reform period and not due to variation in technical efficiency. Technical efficiency has, in fact, decreased after reform for all the three industries indicating tendency of convergence of overall technical efficiency of the states' manufacturing.

THOMAS E. VASS, The Private Capital Market, IEA
Email: tvass@privatecapitalmarket.com

Bootstrapping innovation economics means that cash flow from an earlier event is used to support subsequent investment events. The regional capital markets, based upon internet technologies, provide the mechanism for this bootstrapping of capital from one generation of innovation to the next.