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Racism Pays: How Racial Exploitation Gets Innovation Off The Ground, Daria Roithmayr
Racism Pays: How Racial Exploitation Gets Innovation Off The Ground, Daria Roithmayr
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Recent work on the history of capitalism documents the key role that racial exploitation played in the launch of the global cotton economy and the construction of the transcontinental railroad. But racial exploitation is not a thing of the past. Drawing on three case studies, this Paper argues that some of our most celebrated innovations in the digital economy have gotten off the ground by racially exploiting workers of color, paying them less than the marginal revenue product of their labor for their essential contributions. Innovators like Apple and Uber have been able to racially exploit workers of color because …
The Cost Of Novelty, W. Nicholson Price Ii
The Cost Of Novelty, W. Nicholson Price Ii
Law & Economics Working Papers
Patent law tries to spur the development of new, better, innovative technology. But it focuses much more on “new” than “better” — and it turns out that “new” carries real social costs. I argue that patent law promotes innovation that diverges from existing technology, either a little (what I call “differentiating innovation”) or a lot (“exploring innovation”), at the expense of innovation that tells us more about existing technology (“deepening innovation”). Patent law’s focus on newness is unsurprising, and fits within a well-told narrative of innovative diversity accompanied by market selection of the best technologies. Unfortunately, innovative diversity brings not …
Economic Solutions To Nuclear Energy's Financial Challenges, Zachary Robock
Economic Solutions To Nuclear Energy's Financial Challenges, Zachary Robock
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
This Note presents a legal, economic, and regulatory roadmap to drive long-term innovation in sustainable energy generation. Next-generation nuclear power, which fundamentally mitigates many safety and nuclear waste issues, is the focus of this Note; however, the economic concepts can be applied to encourage solar, wind, advanced battery, and other sustainable technologies with high upfront costs and low long-term variable costs. Advanced nuclear energy generation is economically competitive on a long-term levelized cost basis, but suffers from a timing issue—a large amount of capital is needed upfront, with repayment over several decades, during which time significant capital costs can accrue …
Knowledge, Competition And The Innovation: Is Stronger Ipr Protection Really Needed For More And Better Innovations, Giovanni Dosi, Luigi Marengo, Corrado Pasquali
Knowledge, Competition And The Innovation: Is Stronger Ipr Protection Really Needed For More And Better Innovations, Giovanni Dosi, Luigi Marengo, Corrado Pasquali
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
The main questions addressed in this Article are thus: given that growth is a highly desirable phenomenon and that it is primarily spurred by technological innovation, how should society solve the problem of favoring a sufficient level of investments in R&D? In particular, is it necessarily true and always desirable that, independent of any other consideration, society should protect innovators from competition and shelter them in a legally protected and enforced monopoly? Is it true that the real source of economic value of new recipes is only found in the blueprints of ideas that those recipes implement? Is it necessarily …
Limiting Patentees' Market Power Without Reducing Innovation Incentives: The Perverse Benefits Of Uncertainty And Non-Injunctive Remedies, Ian Ayres, Paul Klemperer
Limiting Patentees' Market Power Without Reducing Innovation Incentives: The Perverse Benefits Of Uncertainty And Non-Injunctive Remedies, Ian Ayres, Paul Klemperer
Michigan Law Review
Uncertainty and delay in patent litigation may have unforeseen virtues. The combination of these oft-criticized characteristics might induce a limited amount of infringement that enhances social welfare without reducing (or without substantially reducing) the profitability of the patentee. Patent infringement is generally viewed as socially inefficient because infringement reduces the patentee's ex ante incentive to innovate. Limited amounts of infringement combined with increased patent duration, however, can substantially reduce the distortionary ex post effects of supracompetitive pricing without reducing the patentee's ex ante incentives to innovate. Indeed, this Article derives a legal regime that preserves the incentive to innovate by …
The Un-Easy Case For Technological Optimism, James E. Krier, Clayton P. Gillette
The Un-Easy Case For Technological Optimism, James E. Krier, Clayton P. Gillette
Articles
"Technological optimism" is a term of art, an article of faith, and a theory of politics. It is a view that pervades modem attitudes, yet gets little explicit attention. For a brief period the situation was otherwise. In the early 1970s, the optimistic outlook figured prominently in an important debate about nothing less than the future of the world. Technological optimism won. The outcome was unsurprising, given the nature of the argument. On one side of the debate was a group of self-proclaimed Malthusians who foresaw an impending period of stark scarcity unless relatively drastic remedial steps were quickly taken; …