https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/70023/1/347148050.pdf

R&D cooperation and innovation activities of firms—evidence for the German manufacturing industry

Focusing on the management of voluntary and involuntary transfers of know-how in imperfect competition, the Industrial Organisation models on R&D cooperation have generated results that seem to be robust across a wide variety of models. This paper reviews the mainstream IO models and results. A major finding is that when spillovers exceed some critical level, cooperation in R&D is beneficial to technical progress and leads to higher profits for the partners. Trying to further enrich these models, recent theoretical developments have studied the issues of stability of R&D cooperation, explaining why attractive alliances are not always formed. The various mechanisms, which this literature suggests to turn R&D cooperation into stable profitable agreements, are discussed. Finally, the scarce empirical evidence that exists to test some of the theoretical hypotheses is reviewed.

Collaboration in R&D: An Assessment of Theoretical and Empirical Findings

https://brousseau.info/pdf/1998_Bessy-Brousseau.pdf

Technology licensing contracts features and diversity

Evolution of global airline strategic alliance and consolidation in the twenty-first century

As the Copenhagen Accord indicates, most of the international community agrees that global mean temperature should not be allowed to rise more than two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels to avoid unacceptable damages from climate change. The scientific evidence distilled in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and recent reports by the US National Academies shows that this can only be achieved by vast reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. Still, international cooperation on greenhouse gas emissions reductions suffers from incentives to free-ride and to renegotiate agreements in case of noncompliance, and the same is true for other so-called “public good games.” Using game theory, we show how one might overcome these problems with a simple dynamic strategy of linear compensation when the parameters of the problem fulfill some general conditions and players can be considered to be sufficiently rational. The proposed strategy redistributes liabilities according to past compliance levels in a proportionate and timely way. It can be used to implement any given allocation of target contributions, and we prove that it has several strong stability properties.

/pdf/self-enforcing-strategies-to-deter-free-riding-in-the-2nzcu6dzx4.pdf

Self-enforcing strategies to deter free-riding in the climate change mitigation game and other repeated public good games

Strategic alliances as Stackelberg cartels – concept and equilibrium alliance structure

This paper aims to explain the use of different governance modes for R&D cooperation. We argue that (ex ante) cross-licensing agreements are preferred to R&D joint ventures if potential synergy effects are negligible and the double moral hazard problem caused by unobservable R&D effort can be solved by an appropriate royalty scheme. It is shown that the first best effort decisions are implementable by a cross-licensing agreement if royalty payments are based on R&D success. However, if the payments have to be based on actual know-how transfer because R&D success is not verifiable, there are cases where joint ventures are necessary to induce optimal R&D effort.

Moral hazard and optimal contract form for R&D cooperation

Strategic alliances: a substitute for strategic trade policy?

Der folgende Beitrag beschaftigt sich mit den Anreizen der Unternehmen zur Investition in elektronische Koordination. Dabei wird in einem Oligopolmodell mit differenzierten Produkten auf die transportkostensenkende Wirkung bei Handel uber elektronische Markte abgestellt. Dieser Transportkosteneffekt ist bei digitalen bzw. digitalisierbaren Produkten oder Dienstleistungen besonders ausgepragt, wahrend bei physischen Gutern und nicht-digitalisierbaren Dienstleistungen mit geringeren Kosteneinsparungen zu rechnen ist. Dem Unterschied zwischen digitalen und nicht-digitalen Gutern wird durch die Modellierung des Wettbewerbs im Absatzmarkt (bei digitalen Produkten ist Preiswettbewerb plausibel) und der Investitionskostenfunktion (bei nicht-digitalen Produkten keine Transportkostensenkung auf Null) Rechnung getragen: Es wird ein zweistufiges Spiel mit transportkostenreduzierender Investition auf der ersten und Preis- bzw. Mengen wettbewerb auf der zweiten Stufe analysiert.

Karl Morasch

Papers

Strategic alliances as Stackelberg cartels – concept and equilibrium alliance structure

Moral hazard and optimal contract form for R&D cooperation

Strategic alliances: a substitute for strategic trade policy?

Anreize zur Investition in elektronische Koordi nation: Digitale vs. nicht-digitale Produkte