پژوهش سرمایه گذاری های مشترک و سیاست مطلوب تحقیق و توسعه با اطلاعات نامتقارن

When to allow Research Joint Ventures (RJVs) or not is an important instrument in the development of an optimal R&D policy. The regulator, however, is unlikely to know all the relevant information to regulate R&D optimally. The extent to which there exist appropriability problems between the firms is one such variable that is private information to the firms in the industry. In a duopoly setting we analyze the characteristics of a second-best R&D policy where the government can either allow RJVs or not and give lump-sum subsidies to the parties involved. The second-best R&D policy without subsidies will either block some welfare improving RJVs or allow some welfare reducing ones. With lump-sum subsidies, the second-best policy trades off the expected subsidy cost with allowing welfare decreasing RJVs or blocking welfare increasing ones.

Two features distinguish R&D from ordinary capital investments. First, R&D is a public good (Arrow, 1962 and Grossman and Shapiro, 1986). The use by one firm of the information produced by its R&D investments does not diminish the amount of information available to other firms. The optimal economy-wide allocation would therefore involve the free distribution of this information. Second, R&D investment is plagued by an externality problem. Firms investing in R&D typically cannot fully appropriate the results from their own R&D investments. This tends to reduce the incentive to invest in R&D when firms act non-cooperatively (Spence, 1984d'Aspremont and Jacquemin, 1988De Bondt and Veugelers, 1991Kamien et al., 1992).1 In this paper we concentrate on two policy options that have been proposed to reduce these market failures: internalization of the externality and subsidies (Katz and Ordover, 1990). One way to avoid the appropriability problem is to internalize the spillovers by forming Research Joint Ventures (RJV). In an RJV the firms internalize the positive effect these spillovers have on the R&D and profits of their partners by deciding jointly on their R&D investments, taking their spillovers into account. Subsidies provide an additional R&D policy instrument to improve the allocation of resources to R&D investments (Jacquemin, 1988Brodley, 1990). Subsidies can be lump-sum transfers which implement the R&D policy or per unit R&D subsidies which change the marginal incentive to invest in R&D. In this paper we only consider lump-sum subsidies that implement the R&D policy. A subsidy per unit of R&D creates additional incentive problems in reporting the true level of R&D investments and would complicate the analysis considerably.2

Knowledge resulting from R&D investments is characterized by both an externality and a public good problem. By implementing an R&D policy that encourages cooperative R&D in industries with severe appropriability problems, the government increases social welfare. However, the extent to which appropriability problems exist in a specific industry, is usually private information. Hence, the government should set up its R&D policy taking this information problem into account. The government and the firms have conflicting objectives whenever both firms have low spillovers. The optimal R&D policy screens for the state (L, L) except when either the state (L, L) or the state (H, H) is extremely likely, or, when high and low spillover firms cannot simultaneously be induced to reveal their type truthfully. In the no-subsidy case the probability of allowing an RJV is such that a low spillover firm has no incentive to lie about its spillover in order to be allowed to form an RJV. If public funds are not too costly, lump-sum subsidies are a more efficient means to screen out the state (L, L). The expected subsidy compensates the low spillover firm for revealing truthfully. However, these lump-sum subsidies will not improve allocative efficiency of R&D at the margin. They only improve the screening capability of the government. Examining a two-part subsidy scheme with a fixed transfer and a per unit R&D subsidy is left for future research. The per unit R&D subsidies improve total welfare both in the case of R&D cooperation and competition. But we still expect to find similar distortions of the first-best R&D policy as in the case of lump-sum subsidies analyzed here.