Patent Renewals and R&D Incentives
通过道德风险和不对称信息模型，证明当企业研发生产率不同时，差异化专利期限能提升社会福利，并设计出通过专利续期和费用菜单实现的最优机制。
In a model with moral hazard and assymmetric information, we show that it can be welfare-improving to differentiate patent lives when firms have different R&D productivities. A uniform patent life provides excessive R&D incentive to low-productivity firms, and too little to high ones. The optimally differentiated patent scheme can be implemented through a menu of patent lives (or renewals) and associated fees. We characterize the optimal mechanism, and use simulation analysis to compare it with existing patent renewal systems and to illustrate the potential welfare gains from the optimal policy.