Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
This paper surveys the theoretical literature on R&D cartels and the empirical literature on problems of appropriability in order to evaluate the case for encouraging antitrust authorities to treat R&D cooperative ventures leniently. The case for R&D cooperative ventures trades potential gains from internalizing technological spillovers off against a possible reduction in output market competition, but the empirical evidence suggests that R&D spillovers can easily be exaggerated. This suggests that the design of antitrust policy towards R&D cooperative ventures is likely to be of major importance if they are to yield net social gains, and the paper concludes with a critical examination of the NCRA introduced in U.S. and Block Exemption introduced in Europe in the 1980s. Copyright 1993 by Oxford University Press.