Incentives and forms of cooperation in research and development

The paper examines the main factors that affect the incentive to cooperate in R&D, inquiring into the effects of cooperation on incentives to innovate in both a complete and an incomplete contract framework. It considers several forms of cooperative agreements and studies the circumstances that make one type of cooperation, more likely than others, to emerge. Theoretical considerations suggest that two of the main factors are uncertainty and spillovers. Further, the incentive to cooperate may be greater or less among symmetric than among asymmetric firms, depending on the source of the asymmetry. When firms cooperate, in most cases they prefer a research joint venture, but because of transaction costs, moral hazard and adverse selection problems other forms of cooperation in R&D may occur. Uncertainty and spillovers also affect the size and the nature of coalitions, and in some circumstances competing research joint ventures may be formed. Finally, the paper surveys the empirical evidence and discusses its consistency with the theoretical conclusions.