Journal of Economic Literature
Book Reviews
2026-08-28
David Sibley of U of TX at Austin reviews “Patents: Economics, Policy and Measurement” by Frederic M. Scherer,. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins “Eighteen papers, all previously published, explore various aspects of the patent system. Papers discuss the economics of the patent system; a geometric interpretation of Nordhaus's theory of optimal patent life; a comment on Edmund Kitch's analysis of exclusive patent rights and monopoly power; the economics of human gene patents; the pharmaceutical industry and world intellectual property standards; economic effects of strengthening pharmaceutical patent protection in Italy; post-TRIPS options for access to patented medicines in developing nations; global welfare in pharmaceutical patenting; firm size, market structure, opportunity, and the output of patented inventions; corporate inventive output, profits, and growth; interindustry technology flows in the United States; demand-pull and technological invention in the work of Jacob Schmookler; the propensity to patent; technology flows matrix estimation; the Office of Technology Assessment and Forecast industry concordance as a means of identifying industry technology origins; exploring the tail of patented invention value distributions; citation frequency and the value of patented inventions; and the innovation lottery. Scherer is Aetna Professor Emeritus at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and Lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. Name index.”