There is evidence that competing firms delegate R&D to the same independent profit-maximizing laboratory. We draw on this stylized fact to construct a model where two firms in the same industry offer transfer payments in exchange of user-specific R&D services from a common laboratory. Inter-firm and within-laboratory externalities affect the intensity of competition among delegating firms on the intermediate market for technology. Whether competition is relatively soft or tight is reflected by each firm’s transfer payment offers to the laboratory. This in turn determines the laboratory’s capacity to earn profits, R&D outcomes, delegating firms’ profits, and social welfare. We compare the delegated R&D game to two other one where firms (i) cooperatively conduct in-house R&D, and (ii) non-cooperatively choose in-house R&D. The delegated R&D game Pareto dominates the other two games, and the laboratory earns positive profits, only if within-laboratory R&D services are sufficiently complementary, but inter-firm spillovers are sufficiently low. We find no room for policy intervention, because the privately profitable decision to delegate R&D, when the laboratory participates, always benefits consumers.
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Paper provided by HEC Montréal, Institut d'économie appliquée in its series Cahiers de recherche with number
05-01.
Length: 57 pages Date of creation: Jan 2005 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:iea:carech:0501
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Bruno Versaevel & Désiré Vencatachellum, 2006.
"R&D Delegation in a Duopoly with Spillovers,"
Working Papers
0610, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique (GATE), Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Université Lyon 2, Ecole Normale Supérieure.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets O31 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
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