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A guide to the pandemic economy: essential reading about the long-term implications of our current crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed a firehose of information (much of it wrong) and an avalanche of opinions (many of them ill-founded). Most of us are so distracted by the everyday awfulness that we don't see the broader issues in play. In this book, economist Joshua Gans steps back from the short-term chaos to take a clear and systematic look at how economic choices are being made in response to COVID-19. He shows that containing the virus and pausing the economy--without letting businesses fail and people lose their jobs--are the necessary first steps.Gans outlines the phases of the pandemic economy, from containment to reset to recovery and enhancement. Warning against thinking in terms of a "tradeoff" between public health and economic health, Gans explains that containment gives us the opportunity to develop effective testing that will make it safe for people to interact. Once the virus is contained, we will need to pivot toward innovating, and, finally, we will come together to plan how to protect ourselves from future pandemics. He looks at policy tools that might aid an economic recovery, distinguishing between economic losses during a pandemic and a recession. Gans lays out the economic choices accessibly but with urgency, leaving politics out of it. Economics in the Age of COVID-19 is essential reading for anyone interested in the long-term implications of our current crisis.--

"This paper examines argues that while two distinct perspectives characterize the foundations of the public funding of research - filling a selection gap and solving a disclosure problem - in fact both the selection choices of public funders and their criteria for disclosure and commercialization shape the level and type of funding for research and the disclosures that arise as a consequence. In making our argument, we begin by reviewing project selection criteria and policies towards disclosure and commercialization (including patent rights) made by major funding organizations, noting the great variation between these institutions. We then provide a model of how selection criteria and funding conditions imposed by funders interact with the preferences of scientists to shape those projects that accept public funds and the overall level of openness in research. Our analysis reveals complex and unexpected relationships between public funding, private funding, and public disclosure of research. We show, for example, that funding choices made by public agencies can lead to unintended, paradoxical effects, providing short-term openness while stifling longer-term innovation. Implications for empirical evaluation and an agenda for future research are discussed"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

This paper considers the impact of the intellectual property (IP) system on the timing of cooperation/licensing by start-up technology entrepreneurs. If the market for technology licenses is efficient, the timing of licensing is independent of whether IP has already been granted. In contrast, the need to disclosure complementary (yet unprotected) knowledge, asymmetric information, or search costs may retard efficient technology transfer. In these cases, reductions in uncertainty surrounding the scope and extent of IP rights may facilitate trade in the market for ideas. We employ a dataset combining information about cooperative licensing and the timing of patent allowances (the administrative event when patent rights are clarified). While pre-allowance licensing does occur, the hazard rate for achieving a cooperative licensing agreement significantly increases after patent allowance. Moreover, the impact of the patent system depends on the strategic and institutional environment in which firms operate. Patent allowance seems to play a particularly important role for technologies with longer technology lifecycles or that lack alternative mechanisms such as copyright, reputation, or brokers. The findings suggest that imperfections in the market for ideas may be important, and that formal IP rights may facilitate gains from technological trade.