Taste for Exclusivity and Intellectual Property Rights

This article analyzes the effects of intellectual property rights protection on innovation in a quality-ladder model in which part of the consumers value being the exclusive consumers of the newest generation of a good. In the case of a monopoly innovator, we show that reducing IP protection can increase the average innovation rate by regularly destroying exclusivity and thereby creating incentives to invent new exclusive goods. In the case where R&D is undertaken by entrants, the innovation rate, however, increases in the strength of IP protection for most market structures. In each case, we derive the welfare-maximizing strength of IP protection

Economic ageing and demographic change

This paper presents a generalised model of overlapping generations with economic ageing of households. Economic age is defined as a set of personal attributes such as earnings potential and tastes that are characteristic of a person’s position in the life-cycle. We separate the concepts of economic age and time since birth by assuming only a small number of different states of age. Agents sharing the same economic characteristics are aggregated analytically to a small number of age groups. The model thus allows for a very parsimonious approximation of life-cycle differences in earnings, wealth and consumption. As an illustration, we apply the model quantitatively to study the impact of demographic change.

Economic Aging and Demographic Change

This paper presents a generalized model of overlapping generations with economic aging of households. Economic age is defined as a set of personal attributes such as earnings potential and tastes that are characteristic of a person's position in the life-cycle. We separate the concepts of economic age and time since birth in assuming only a small number of different states of age. Agents sharing the same economic characteristics are aggregated analytically to a low number of age groups. The model thus allows for a very parsimonious approximation of life-cycle differences in earnings, wealth and consumption. As an illustration, we quantitatively apply the model to study the impact of demographic change.Overlapping Generations, Aging, Demographic Change, Life-cycle

Probabilistic aging

The paper develops an overlapping generations model with probabilistic aging of households. We define age as a set of personal attributes such as earnings potential, health and tastes that are characteristic of a person's position in the life-cycle. In assuming a limited number of different states of age, we separate the concepts of age and time since birth. Agents may retain their age characteristics for several periods before they move with a given probability to another state of age. Different generations that share the same age characteristics are aggregated analytically to a low number of age groups. The probabilistic aging model thus allows for a very parsimonious yet rather close approximation of demographic structure and life-cycle differences in earnings, wealth and consumption. Existing classes of overlapping generations models follow as special cases

Observing Each Other's Observations in a Bayesian Coordination Game

We study a Bayesian coordination game where agents receive private information on the game's payoff structure. In addition, agents receive private signals that inform them of each other's private information. We show that once agents possess these different types of information, there exists a coordination game in the evaluation of this information. Even though the precisions of both signal types is exogenous, the precision with which agents forecast each other's actions in equilibrium turns out to be endogenous. As a consequence, there exist multiple equilibria which differ with regard to the way that agents weight their private information to forecast each other's actions. Finally, even though all players' signals are of identical quality, it turns out that efficient equilibria are asymmetric