It is believed that if there is no informational asymmetry between firms and the government, firms could be remunerated for innovation using optimal taxation rather than patents. We show that under reasonable conditions (such as the government’s inability to customise the tax rate for each firm), patent protection is preferable to a tax/subsidy scheme if the marginal costs of the imitators are sufficiently higher than that of the innovator. Otherwise, the tax/subsidy scheme is preferable. These results hold under Cournot and Bertrand competition with product differentiation, but not for the case of Bertrand competition with homogeneous products. We rationalise these findings as the results of a trade-off between the distortions induced by monopoly under patents and production inefficiency under the tax/subsidy scheme.

中文翻译：

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专利与奖励：生产效率低下的含义

人们认为，如果企业与政府之间不存在信息不对称性，则可以通过最优税收而不是专利来为企业的创新获得报酬。我们表明，在合理的条件下（例如政府无力为每家公司定制税率），如果模仿者的边际成本足够高于创新者的边际成本，则专利保护优于税收/补贴方案。否则，税收/补贴方案是更可取的。这些结果在具有产品差异性的古诺（Cournot）和贝特朗（Bertrand）竞争中保持不变，但在同质产品的贝特朗（Bertrand）竞争情况下却不成立。我们将这些发现合理化，作为专利权下的垄断所引起的扭曲与税收/补贴计划下的生产效率低下之间权衡的结果。