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Contribution to Book
Overtaking
The American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law (2012)
  • Robert D. Cooter
  • Aaron Edlin
Abstract

To maximize growth, law and policy should maximize the profitability of innovation. Developing an innovative idea requires combining it with capital (the double-trust dilemma) and labor (the collaborators’ dilemma), which is what business ventures do. To solve these dilemmas, business ventures especially need the legal framework of property, contracts and corporate law. Law and policy for dynamic industries in the United States currently fails to maximize growth because it fails to maximize the profitability of innovation. Intellectual property law balances growth and the loss to consumers from higher prices. Instead, to maximize innovation, intellectual property law should balance higher revenues from monopoly power and higher costs from buying past innovations to develop future innovations.

Keywords
  • law and growth economics; innovation
Disciplines
Publication Date
2012
Editor
Frank Buckley
Publisher
Yale University Press
Citation Information
Robert D. Cooter and Aaron Edlin. "Overtaking" The American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law (2012)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/robert_cooter/164/