Much capital now competes for relative surplus value, enjoying a relative monopoly before a new method of production becomes widespread in the market.
On a global scale I have argued this is inherent in the process of unequal exchange from less technologically developed countries to more technologically developed countries.
Does this paper have any sense of the social context of the private ownership of the means of production, or is it just an idealist nice idea?
Chris Burford
London
At 11:37 18/11/99 -0500, you wrote:
>"Rewards versus Intellectual Property Rights"
>
> BY: STEVEN SHAVELL
> Harvard Law School
> National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
> TANGUY VAN YPERSELE
> Tilburg University
>
>Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:
> http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=145292
>
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> http://www.law.harvard.edu/Programs/olin_center/
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>Paper ID: Harvard Law School, Olin Center for Law, Economics &
> Business, Discussion Paper No. 246
> Date: December 1998
>
> Contact: STEVEN SHAVELL
> Email: Mailto:shavell at law.harvard.edu
> Postal: Harvard Law School
> Hauser Hall 508
> Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
> Phone: (617)495-3668
> Fax: (617)496-2256
> Co-Auth: TANGUY VAN YPERSELE
> Email: Mailto:tanguy at kub.nl
> Postal: Tilburg University
> P.O. Box 90153
> 5000 LE Tilburg, THE NETHERLANDS
>
>Paper Requests:
> Contact Nancy Knapp, John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and
> Business at Harvard Law School, Hauser 506, Cambridge, MA 02138.
> Mailto:nknapp at law.harvard.edu Phone:(617)496-1670. Fax:(617)
> 496-2256.
>
>ABSTRACT:
> This paper compares reward systems to intellectual property
> rights (patents and copyrights). Under a reward system,
> innovators are paid for innovations directly by government
> (possibly on the basis of sales), and innovations pass
> immediately into the public domain. Thus, reward systems
> engender incentives to innovate without creating the monopoly
> power of intellectual property rights, but a principal
> difficulty with rewards is the information required for their
> determination. We conclude in our model that intellectual
> property rights do not possess a fundamental social advantage
> over reward systems, and that an optional reward system--under
> which innovators choose between rewards and intellectual
> property rights--is superior to intellectual property rights.
>
>