Uday Bhanu Sinha

Patent Licensing from a High-Cost Firm to a Low-Cost Firm

We depart from the standard framework and study optimal patent licensing under Cournot duopoly where the technology transfer takes place from an innovative firm, which is relatively inefficient in terms of cost of production, to its cost-efficient rival. Interestingly, we find even a drastic technology is licensed and the optimal licensing arrangement always involves a two-part tariff (i.e. a fixed-fee plus a linear per unit output royalty). Under non-drastic innovation, the two-part tariff is optimal when the cost difference between the firms is moderate. Our framework also helps to bridge the gap between optimal licensing schemes for ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ patentees.

Patent Protection, Southern Innovation and Welfare in a North–South Trade Model

In a North–South trade model, we analyse the implications of southern patent protection on southern innovation, profits and welfare. Southern patent protection may make the northern firm worse off and the southern firm better off by increasing the southern firms incentive for innovation and affecting the nature of competition in the world market. The impact of southern patent protection on a countrys welfare and on world welfare depends on the cost of southern innovation and the degree of product substitutability. We provide important insights into the outcomes of international negotiations regarding patent enforcement in the southern countries.

Understanding NREGA: A Simple Theory and Some Facts

A developing economy like India is often characterised by a labour market with demand and supply of labour and a wage that even if competitively determined may not be adequate for the poor household to reach their target income; what they consider as means of a decent living. Envisaging situations like these, the Indian government has implemented the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in recent past, to complement the income of the poor by providing them employment for certain number of labour days in a year. In this paper, using a simple theoretical model, we have analysed the impact of NREGA scheme on (i) rural labour market, (ii) income of the poor households and (iii) overall agricultural production. It is seen that the income from NREGA alone can be a substantial part of the target income of the poor. We show that in such a situation, the poor may exhibit a backward bending supply curve of labour which may lead to an aggregate reduction in agricultural output. This adverse production effect can happen even when the NREGA activities lead to a moderate improvement in agricultural productivity. Data on food prices tend to support our finding to some extent.

Attitude to schooling, wage premium and child labour

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyse the incidence of child labour in developing countries, focusing on the role of parental attitude towards education combined with the returns to education in deciding between child labour and child education. Design/methodology/approach - Using an inter-temporal decision making framework, it is assumed that parents decide on the extent of schooling for their children. Findings - Though education enhances the productivity of a worker and thereby increases the wage of an educated worker, it was found that a portion of children drop out of school before completion and join the workforce as the returns from full schooling are not high enough. This happens even when parents intrinsically value education and also because of the wage premium, which is a strictly positive function of the time spent in school. The paper examines the effectiveness of standard policies like compulsory schooling or financial incentives in reducing the incidence of child labour and finds that the effects of some of the policies are ambiguous. Originality/value - The existing literature mainly focuses on poverty as the main reason for the incidence of child labour and usually views child labour through the lens of credit market imperfections. Unlike the existing literature, this paper emphasises the role of parental attitude towards education and the wage premium associated with schooling.

Export cartel and consumer welfare

The purpose of this paper is to show that export cartels are not necessarily harmful for consumers in the importing countries. Using the strategic trade policy model of Brander and Spencer (1985a), we show that, contrary to the harmful effect, product-market cooperation benefits consumers by affecting the trade policies. We further show that consumers in the importing countries are affected adversely if cooperation is among the governments of the exporting countries, instead of the exporting firms.

Outsourcing Under Incomplete Information

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to show that outsourcing can occur as outcome of a separating or pooling perfect Bayesian equilibrium although it is not profitable under complete information. Therefore, asymmetric information can itself be a reason for outsourcing. Design/methodology/approach - The present paper constructs a model of two firms interacting in the product market under asymmetric information where one firm has private information about its technological capability, and it has the option to produce inputs in-house or buy inputs from an input market. However, using outsourced inputs involves a fixed cost at the plant level. The model solves for perfect Bayesian equilibrium. Findings - There are situations when under complete information, outsourcing of the input will not occur, but, under incomplete information, either only the low-cost type or both high and low-cost types will go for outsourcing, and there always exist reasonable beliefs supporting these equilibria. In particular, when the fixed cost is neither too small not too large, a separating equilibrium occurs in which the low-cost type outsources inputs from the input market but the high-cost type produces in-house; hence, outsourcing signals the firm’s type. Outsourcing by only the high-cost type firm will never occur in equilibrium. Originality/value - That incomplete or asymmetric information can itself be a reason for strategic outsourcing is never identified in the literature. The present paper is an attempt to fill this gap and raise the issue of outsourcing in an incomplete information environment.

Chapter 3 On Patent Licensing

This chapter proposes a survey of the main results produced by the literature on licensing and some original insights, with a particular focus on globalization, North–South models of technology transfer, the issue of how the intellectual property rights influences international licensing, and asymmetric information.