Peritz, Rudolph J.R. --- "The Law and Economics of Progress: IP Rights and Competition Policy" [2012] ELECD 193; in Rosén, Jan (ed), "Individualism and Collectiveness in Intellectual Property Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Individualism and Collectiveness in Intellectual Property Law

Editor(s): Rosén, Jan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857938978

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: The Law and Economics of Progress: IP Rights and Competition Policy

Author(s): Peritz, Rudolph J.R.

Number of pages: 10

Extract:

2. The law and economics of progress:
IP rights and competition policy
Rudolph J.R. Peritz

1. INTRODUCTION

The New York Times and other respected voices of the press have been
observing that the economics profession is in turmoil after its failure to
predict the Great Recession that still threatens us. Indeed, it was modern
economics' overconfidence in its algorithmic routines and its faith in free
market abstractions that drove the collapse in financial markets and its
aftermath by enchanting the judgment of players from hedge fund strate-
gists to investors to regulatory agency officials. But unpredicted financial
panics and recessions are nothing new, of course. And economics has
long been a troubled enterprise, aspiring to the heights of mathematics to
escape its historical roots in moral philosophy and to avoid a behavioralist
future as a branch of social psychology. Like the commerce it scrutinizes,
modern economic analysis can itself be described as cyclical, with epi-
sodic developments, bubbles, panics, inflations, depressions, and reces-
sions, all neatly plotted by the criticisms of esteemed practitioners from
John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith to Nobel Laureates
Amartya Sen and George Stiglitz, and Paul Krugman just two years ago.
It should come as no surprise, then, that there has long been trouble
brewing in the IP economics that prevails in the United States. (By the
way, my references in this chapter to IP are intended as a shorthand for
only patent and copyright.) Given economics' powerful influence on
public policy, the trouble ...