The author of this article describes the content of her course titled “Economics of Artificial Intelligence and Innovation.” The course is offered by the Department of Economics of Yale University at a senior undergraduate level. The author also teaches this course at the MBA program of the Yale School of Management in another format.
This paper studies the endogenous timing of moves in a game with competition in basic research between a university and a commercial firm. It examines the conditions under which the two entities end up investing in innovation at equilibrium, both under simultaneous and sequential moves. It argues that when the innovation process is not too costly, under any timing, the firm conducts research despite the opportunities for complete free riding. The two sequential move games with either player as leader emerge as equilibrium endogenous timings, with both entities realizing higher profits in either outcome than in a simultaneous move game. Each entity also profits more by following than by leading. Finally, as a proxy for a welfare analysis, we compare the propensities for innovation across the three scenarios and find that university leadership yields a superior performance. This may be used as a selection criterion to choose the latter scenario as the unique outcome of endogenous timing.
Using microdata of firm exports and international patent activity, we find that Greek innovative exporters, identified by their patent filing activity, have substantially higher export revenues by selling higher quantities rather than charging higher prices. To account for this evidence, we set up a horizontally differentiated product model in which an innovative exporter competes for market share in a destination against many non-innovative rivals. We argue that as the competition among the exporters of the non-innovative product becomes more intense, the innovative firm exports more compared with its non-innovative rivals in more distant markets, a prediction that is empirically confirmed in the dataset for Greek innovative exporters.
This paper studies, in a two period model, the effects of knowledge spillovers among product market competitors on R&D levels. It argues that when firms' R&D decisions are strategic complements, in industries in which spillovers increase the marginal productivity of a firm's R&D, both incoming and outgoing spillovers spur R&D in equilibrium. Outgoing spillovers can foster innovation even in a homogeneous-product industry. In these industries, the IP law should be such that facilitates knowledge diffusion. If firms have power in deciding the level of knowledge spillovers, we show that a firm will choose to disclose its knowledge to its product market competitors.
We consider a principal-agent model to examine the relationship between risk and incentives of firms who invest in cost-reducing R&D and compete in the product market. We show that a change in risk may trigger opposite responses of rivals in the same industry: lower risk may induce some firms to strengthen, while other firms to weaken the incentives provided to their agents. This result holds regardless of the mode of competition in the product market, Cournot or Bertrand, as long as the rivals’ R&D decisions are strategic substitutes. Our model can generate new empirical implications and can provide an explanation for the lack of strong empirical support in the literature for a negative relationship between risk and incentives. It also has policy implications about the effect of risk on the incentives to innovate and welfare.
This paper studies career concerns in teams where the support a worker receives depends on fellow team members׳ efforts and abilities. In this setting, by exerting effort and providing support, a worker can influence her own and her teammates׳ project outputs in order to bias the learning process in her favor. To manipulate the market׳s assessment, we argue that in equilibrium, a worker has incentives to help or even sabotage her colleagues in order to signal that she is of higher ability. In a multiperiod stationary framework, we show that the stationary level of work effort is above and help effort is below their efficient levels.
This paper studies cost-reducing R&D incentives in a principal-agent model with product market competition. It argues that moral hazard does not necessarily decrease firms' profits in this setting. In highly competitive industries, firms are driven by business-stealing incentives and exert such high levels of R&D that they burn up their profits. In the presence of moral hazard, underprovision of R&D incentives due to risk sharing can generate considerable cost savings, implying higher profits for both rivals. This result indicates firms' incentives to adopt collusive-like behavior in the R&D market. We also examine the agents' contracts and the profits-risk relationship when cross-firm R&D spillovers occur.