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Welcome to the Competition Policy Center
CPC Dissertation Prize 2008
CPC is proud to announce that Jen Brown, PhD candidate in Agriculture and Resource Economics, is the 2008 Dissertation Prize winner.
Jen has been recognized for her paper:
"Quitters Never Win: The (Adverse) Effects of Competing with Superstars"
Abstract: Managers use internal competition to motivate worker effort, yet I present a simple economic model suggesting that the benefits of competition depend critically on workers’ relative abilities--large differences in skill may reduce competitors’ efforts. This paper uses panel data from professional golfers and finds that the presence of a superstar in a rank-order tournament is associated with lower competitor performance. On average, higher-skill PGA golfers’ tournament scores are 0.8 strokes higher when Tiger Woods participates, relative to when Woods is absent. Lower-skill players’ scores appear unaffected by the superstar’s presence. The adverse superstar effect increases during Woods’s streaks and disappears during Woods’s slumps. There is no evidence that reduced performance is due to “riskier” play.
New Working Papers:"Scarcity of Ideas and Options to Invest in R&D," Nisvan Erkal and Suzanne Scotchmer, December 2007 "Efficient Division of Profits from Complementary Innovations," Richard J. Gilbert ad Michael L. Katz, June 2007 "Reinvigorating Horizontal Merger Enforcement," Jonathan B. Baker and Carl Shapiro, April 2007 "Patent Reform: Aligning Reward and Contribution," Carl Shapiro, March 2007 "How Strong Are Weak Patents?," Joseph Farrell and Carl Shapiro, January 2007 "Competition and Innovation," Richard J. Gilbert, January 2007 "Should Good Patents Come in Small Packages? A Welfare Analysis of Intellectual Property Bundling," Richard J. Gilbert and Michael L. Katz, January 2007 "Patent Hold-Up and Royalty Stacking," Mark A. Lemley and Carl Shapiro, January 2007 "Antitrust," Louis Kaplow and Carl Shapiro, January 2007 |
News & Events2008 Compass Prizes 2007 Compass Prizes Summary of October 2007 Conference on the Economics of Competition and Innovation Does our patent system promote and protect innovation? Or do “patent trolls” and treacherous “patent thickets”, and a flawed regulatory system, impede innovation? The Competition Policy Center invited 35 scholars to a conference on the Economics of Competition and Innovation to explore just those questions. Speakers included: |