Incentives to innovate and social harm: Laissez-faire, authorization or penalties?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Immordino, Giovanni; Pagano, Marco; Polo, Michele
• 署名单位: Bocconi University; University of Salerno; University of Naples Federico II
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2011.01.011
• 发表日期: 2011
• 页码: 864-876
• 关键词: innovation; Liability for harm; Safety regulation; Authorization

摘要

When firms' research can lead to potentially harmful innovations, public intervention may thwart their incentives to undertake research by reducing its expected profitability (average deterrence) and may guide the use of innovation (marginal deterrence). We compare four policy regimes: laissez faire, ex-post penalties and two forms of authorization - lenient and strict. If fines are unbounded, laissez faire is optimal if the social harm from innovation is sufficiently unlikely; otherwise, regulation should impose increasing penalties as innovation becomes more dangerous. If fines are bounded by limited liability, for intermediate levels of expected social harm it is optimal to adopt (indifferently) penalties or lenient authorization, while strict authorization becomes optimal if social harm is sufficiently likely. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.