IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/12474.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Competition, Innovation and Growth with Limited Commitment

Author

Listed:
  • Ramon Marimon
  • Vincenzo Quadrini

Abstract

We study how barriers to competition---such as restrictions to business start-up and strict enforcement of covenants or IPR---affect the investment in knowledge capital when contracts are not enforceable. These barriers lower the competition for human capital and reduce the incentive to accumulate knowledge. We show in a dynamic general equilibrium model that this mechanism has the potential to account for significant cross-country income inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Ramon Marimon & Vincenzo Quadrini, 2006. "Competition, Innovation and Growth with Limited Commitment," NBER Working Papers 12474, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12474
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w12474.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rodolfo E. Manuelli & Ananth Seshadri, 2014. "Human Capital and the Wealth of Nations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(9), pages 2736-2762, September.
    2. Thomas Cooley & Ramon Marimon & Vincenzo Quadrini, 2004. "Aggregate Consequences of Limited Contract Enforceability," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(4), pages 817-847, August.
    3. Anton, James J & Yao, Dennis A, 1994. "Expropriation and Inventions: Appropriable Rents in the Absence of Property Rights," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 190-209, March.
    4. Daron Acemoglu & Jorn-Steffen Pischke, 1999. "The Structure of Wages and Investment in General Training," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(3), pages 539-572, June.
    5. Albert Marcet & Ramon Marimon, 2019. "Recursive Contracts," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(5), pages 1589-1631, September.
    6. Marcet, Albert & Marimon, Ramon, 1992. "Communication, commitment, and growth," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 219-249, December.
    7. Daron Acemoglu & Philippe Aghion & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2006. "Distance to Frontier, Selection, and Economic Growth," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(1), pages 37-74, March.
    8. Daron Acemoglu, 1997. "Training and Innovation in an Imperfect Labour Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 64(3), pages 445-464.
    9. Boyan Jovanovic, 2004. "The Product Cycle and Inequality," NBER Working Papers 10910, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Razin, Ronny & Baccara, Mariagiovanna, 2004. "Curb Your Innovation: Corporate Conservatism in the Presence of Imperfect Intellectual Property Rights," CEPR Discussion Papers 4466, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Philippe Aghion & Nick Bloom & Richard Blundell & Rachel Griffith & Peter Howitt, 2005. "Competition and Innovation: an Inverted-U Relationship," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(2), pages 701-728.
    12. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1988. "On the mechanics of economic development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-42, July.
    13. Boldrin,Michele & Levine,David K., 2010. "Against Intellectual Monopoly," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521127264.
    14. Acemoglu, Daron & Shimer, Robert, 1999. "Holdups and Efficiency with Search Frictions," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 40(4), pages 827-849, November.
    15. Jones, Charles I, 1995. "R&D-Based Models of Economic Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(4), pages 759-784, August.
    16. Stephen L. Parente & Edward C. Prescott, 2002. "Barriers to Riches," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262661306, December.
    17. Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 1996. "Implications of Efficient Risk Sharing without Commitment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(4), pages 595-609.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nicola Pavoni & Christopher Sleet & Matthias Messner, 2018. "The Dual Approach to Recursive Optimization: Theory and Examples," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(1), pages 133-172, January.
    2. Fernando Rio & Antonio Sampayo, 2017. "Complementarity, Linkages between Firms, and the Effect of Entry Costs on Productivity," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 1281-1304, November.
    3. Hernan Moscoso Boedo & Toshihiko Mukoyama, 2012. "Evaluating the effects of entry regulations and firing costs on international income differences," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 143-170, June.
    4. Messner Matthias & Pavoni Nicola & Sleet Christopher, "undated". "On the Dual Approach to Recursive Optimization," GSIA Working Papers 2012-E12, Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business.
    5. Commander, Simon & Svejnar, Jan & Tinn, Katrin, 2008. "Explaining the performance of firms and countries: What does the business environment play?," Working Papers 836, Graduate School of Management, St. Petersburg State University.
    6. Commander, Simon & Nikoloski, Zlatko, 2010. "Institutions and Economic Performance: What Can Be Explained?," IZA Discussion Papers 5247, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Gao, Yanyan & Zang, Leizhen & Roth, Antoine & Wang, Puqu, 2017. "Does democracy cause innovation? An empirical test of the popper hypothesis," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(7), pages 1272-1283.
    8. Federico De Francesco, 2010. "Wage Inequality and Entrepreneurship," 2010 Meeting Papers 959, Society for Economic Dynamics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marimon, Ramon & Quadrini, Vincenzo, 2011. "Competition, human capital and income inequality with limited commitment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(3), pages 976-1008, May.
    2. Miao, Jianjun & Zhang, Yuzhe, 2015. "A duality approach to continuous-time contracting problems with limited commitment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 929-988.
    3. Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon & Robinson, James A., 2005. "Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 6, pages 385-472, Elsevier.
    4. Almuth Scholl, 2018. "Debt Relief for Poor Countries: Conditionality and Effectiveness," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 85(339), pages 626-648, July.
    5. Almuth Scholl, 2009. "Aid Effectiveness and Limited Enforceable Conditionality," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(2), pages 377-391, April.
    6. Tamura, Robert & Dwyer, Jerry & Devereux, John & Baier, Scott, 2019. "Economic growth in the long run," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 1-35.
    7. Almuth Scholl, 2002. "Limited Enforceable International Loans, International Risk Sharing and Trade," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2005-055, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, revised Aug 2005.
    8. Benjamin Montmartin & Nadine Massard, 2015. "Is Financial Support For Private R&D Always Justified? A Discussion Based On The Literature On Growth," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 479-505, July.
    9. Steven Bond‐Smith, 2022. "Discretely innovating: The effect of limited market contestability on innovation and growth," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 69(3), pages 301-327, July.
    10. Matthias Firgo & Peter Mayerhofer, 2015. "Wissens-Spillovers und regionale Entwicklung - welche strukturpolitische Ausrichtung optimiert des Wachstum?," Working Paper Reihe der AK Wien - Materialien zu Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 144, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik.
    11. Aghion, Philippe & Akcigit, Ufuk & Howitt, Peter, 2014. "What Do We Learn From Schumpeterian Growth Theory?," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 515-563, Elsevier.
    12. Alvaro Aguirre, 2017. "Contracting Institutions and Economic Growth," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 24, pages 192-217, March.
    13. Jess Benhabib & Jesse Perla & Christopher Tonetti, 2021. "Reconciling Models of Diffusion and Innovation: A Theory of the Productivity Distribution and Technology Frontier," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(5), pages 2261-2301, September.
    14. Quintin, Erwan, 2008. "Limited enforcement and the organization of production," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 1222-1245, September.
    15. Matthias Messner & Nicola Pavoni, 2004. "On the Recursive Saddle Point Method," Working Papers 255, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    16. Adriana Di Liberto, 2007. "Convergence and Divergence in Neoclassical Growth Models with Human Capital," Economia politica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 2, pages 289-322.
    17. Alessandro D. SCOPELLITI, 2010. "Competition And Economic Growth: A Critical Survey Of The Theoretical Literature," Journal of Applied Economic Sciences, Spiru Haret University, Faculty of Financial Management and Accounting Craiova, vol. 5(1(11)_Spr), pages 70-93.
    18. Jeon, Heesang, 2015. "Knowledge and Contemporary Capitalism in Light of Marx's Value Theory," Thesis Commons g5njk, Center for Open Science.
    19. Zoltán J. Ács & Pontus Braunerhjelm & David B. Audretsch & Bo Carlsson, 2015. "The knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship," Chapters, in: Global Entrepreneurship, Institutions and Incentives, chapter 7, pages 129-144, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Marc J. Melitz & Stephen J. Redding, 2021. "Trade and innovation," CEP Discussion Papers dp1777, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L14 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation
    • L16 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Industrial Organization and Macroeconomics; Macroeconomic Industrial Structure
    • O4 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12474. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.