Patents, prizes and innovation

The use of patents versus prizes to stimulate innovation is a long debated subject. Jean Tirole has written,

"Consider the patent system. It has long been recognized that patents are an inefficient method for providing incentives for innovation since they confer monopoly power on their holders. Information being a public good, it would be ex post socially optimal to award a prize to the innovator and to disseminate the innovation at a low fee. Yet the patent system has proved to be an unexpectedly robust institution. That no one has come up with a superior alternative is presumably due to the fact that, first, it is difficult to describe in advance the parameters that determine the social value of an innovation and therefore the prize to be paid to the inventor, and, second, that we do not trust a system in which a judge or arbitrator would determine ex post the social value of the innovation (perhaps because we are worried that the judge might be incompetent or would have low incentives to become informed, or else would collude with the inventor to overstate the value of the innovation or with the government to understate it). A patent system has the definite advantage of not relying on such ex ante or ex post descriptions (although the definition of the breadth of a patent does) " Jean Tirole, "Incomplete Contracts: Where Do We Stand?" Econometrica, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Jul., 1999), pp. 741-781.

Another round in the debate is about to open with a new NBER working paper on the topic of Prestige and Profit: The Royal Society of Arts and Incentives for Innovation, 1750-1850.

"Debates have long centered around the relative merits of prizes and other incentives for technological innovation. Some economists have cited the experience of the prestigious Royal Society of Arts (RSA), which offered honorary and cash awards, as proof of the efficacy of innovation prizes. The Society initially was averse to patents and prohibited the award of prizes for patented inventions. This study examines data on several thousand of these inducement prizes, matched with patent records and biographical information about the applicants. The empirical analysis shows that inventors of items that were valuable in the marketplace typically chose to obtain patents and to bypass the prize system. Owing to such adverse selection, prizes were negatively related to subsequent areas of important technological discovery. The RSA ultimately became disillusioned with the prize system, which they recognized had done little to promote technological progress and industrialization. The Society acknowledged that its efforts had been “futile” because of its hostility to patents, and switched from offering inducement prizes towards lobbying for reforms to strengthen the patent system. The findings suggest some skepticism is warranted about claims regarding the role that elites and nonmarket-oriented institutions played in generating technological innovation and long-term economic development".

So maybe prizes did not stimulate innovation and possibly patents were more effective. But I'm sure this will not be the last thing we hear on this topic.