Benjamin Kaplan
- Volume 124
- Issue 6
- April 2011
Topic:
April 20, 2011
More from this Issue
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Orphan Business Models: Toward a New Form of Intellectual Property
Vol. 124 No. 6 Drug companies will often have insufficient incentives to undertake clinical testing on drugs ineligible for patent protection. The Orphan Drug Act combats this problem by providing a limited term of exclusivity to companies willing to shepherd a drug through FDA approval. This strategy is a form of intellectual property protection that might be applicable in many contexts beyond drugs, but the literature has not previously addressed the design and potential scope of such protection -
Information Acquisition and Institutional Design
Vol. 124 No. 6 Although good information is critical to effective decisionmaking, public agent’s private incentives to invest in gathering information may not align with the social interest in their doing so. This Article considers how legal-institutional design choices affect government decisionmaker’s incentive to invest in information, as well as how to manage the inevitable trade-off between promoting efficient use of information ex post and stimulating efficient acquisition of information ex ante. Using a simple theoretical framework, the Article considers a range of techniques for incentivizing information gathering, with particular attention to the structure of public institutions and public law. -
Permitting Private Initiation of Criminal Contempt Proceedings
Vol. 124 No. 6