Intellectual protection should be decreasing, not increasing

Have you noticed how the grip on intellectual property law keeps expanding: copyright periods lengthen, the scope of patentable "innovations" widens, and the enforcement of intellectual property become the topic of international trade negotiations. But should we expect this?Michele Boldrin and David Levine look at this using the age-old trade-off in intellectual property protection: long

Open source and private firms can coexist

Open source is a mystery to many, given that contributors give away their innovations and competitors can just scoop them up. One would thus think that an industry would either be proprietary or open source, but not both at the same time.Gastón Llanes and Ramiro de Elejalde show that it is possible. The critical features are that the open and proprietary goods not be perfect substitutes and that

Public pensions vs. public investment

While being civil servant does not pay much in current wages (usually), it typically pays off handsomely in other benefits: stabily of job and pay, health care benefits and especially retirement benefits. This can be viewed as a long-term contract, where the state gives less now for the the peace of mind and future incomes. Few private firms offer this kind of benefit, one likely reason is that