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University of Cambridge

Should We Give Every Cow Its Calf? Monopoly, Competition and Transaction Costs in the Promotion of Innovation and Creativity

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The work presented here is part of a wider research programme oriented around three specific questions. First, how do individual agents appropriate returns from innovation and how is this affected by the availability (or not) of intellectual property rights such as copyrights and patents? Second, how does this translate into the aggregate production of knowledge, once one takes account of the interaction between producers and the cumulative nature of the process of knowledge production? Finally, How can we incorporate this into an estimate of the welfare trade-off inherent in intellectual property rights (the basic prerequisite for formulating rational IP policy)? The dissertation contains theoretical work on each of these questions together with a brief introductory preamble and a review of the existing literature on the economics of knowledge.

Degree

thesis:*
Name dc:type.qualificationname
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Level dc:type.qualificationlevel
Doctoral
Grantor dc:publisher.institution
University of Cambridge
Year dc:date.issued
2008

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Pollock, Rufus

Subjects

dc:subject × 6

Rights

dc:rights
Language dc:language
eng

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
DOI dc:identifier.doi
https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.16512
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/219191

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Cambridge University
Base URL
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Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Pollock, Rufus. Should We Give Every Cow Its Calf? Monopoly, Competition and Transaction Costs in the Promotion of Innovation and Creativity. Doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 2008. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.16512