This paper considers a classic problem in mechanism design: maximizing an objective subjective to incentive constraints.  This type of problem appears in optimal taxation, optimal auctions, monopoly pricing, and so on.  Examples include the work of Mirrlees on taxation, Mussa and Rosen on monopoly pricing and Myerson on auctions.  A representative case for the discussion here is where a firm maximizes profit, selling a good at varying price-quality pairs.  With variation in individual preferences, rather than offer one price-quality pair, it is generally profit-improving to offer a menu of price-quality pairs.  The mechanism design literature has predominantly used quasilinear preferences in the study of optimal mechanisms.  This assumption simplifies the structure of the incentive constraints, and in particular, revenue can be expressed in terms of surplus through a virtual valuation function.  Effectively, variation in  the virtual valuation measures the revenue gain from an allocation variation at a type against the resulting revenue loss through incentive compatibility on other types, leading directly to a first order marginal benefit-marginal cost condition.  This is not possible in general for non-quasilinear preferences, and studying optimal mechanisms in that case is the subject of this paper. 

(Economic Theory, November 2025).

This paper studies the impact of Non-Practising Entities (NPE's) on investment ininnovation.  The issue is considered in an environment with strategic investment behavior and licensing.  Patent strength turns out to be central in determining the impact of an NPE on innovation.  A patenting scheme which assigns rights only to incremental innovation improvement (relative to the innovations of competitors) raises aggregate investment relative to a ``winner-takes-all'' scheme. In a ``winner-takes-all'' scheme the most successful/encompassing innovation obtains all the intellectual property rights, and less successful innovators none, and in this environment the presence of an NPE negatively impacts aggregate investment.

(Journal of Industrial Economics. June 2022,  Vol LXX, No. 2, pp396-462.)

The concept of obviousness is vague, yet it is at the centre of the patent assessment process:  what is obvious to one person, may not be to another. Whether something is obviousness or not depends on one's experience, education, training and other factors.  Patents are granted for useful innovations that are non-trivial and involve some degree of creativity, but making such assessments requires some criteria to guide the assessment.  In patent law, the key criterion is that the innovation be non-obvious.    There isn't any way to unambiguously define and apply the concept in a manner that satisfactorily separates inventions into obvious and non-obvious categories --- the judgment of the assessor affects the determination. Reflecting this, courts has wrestled with the application of obviousness for as long as it has been a defining criterion for patentability, attempting to find or define systematic procedures for evaluation.  This paper proposes a disaggregate approach by examining each claimed step of the invention in terms of its creativity to aggregate to an obviousness score.