| My dissertation is composed of three distinct papers. The first one deals with the inefficiencies in the allocation of researchers to firms arising in a competitive market. The key assumption is that firms invest in research partly to use and understand scientific findings produced elsewhere. In the model, researchers and research infrastructures are substitutes in the revenue function, even though they are complements in the research production function. This implies a novel form of inefficiency: for any given investment, the allocation of researchers to firms is non optimal.;The second paper deals with a different subject: the relationship between skilled biased technology and long-run inequality. I build an OLG model where the supply of skilled and unskilled workers, the cost of education, and credit rationing are endogenous. In the model, the existence of unequal steady states does not depend on the degree of technological skill bias. However, by building an appropriate measure of inequality, I show that when unequal steady states exist, economies with a higher technological skill bias have a greater long-run inequality.;Finally, in the last paper I use a repeated principal-agent model to show that, in a commercial R&D context, a low-ability researcher can deliver a higher payoff to managers than a high-ability researcher. A high-ability researcher is likely to achieve the state preferred by the manager (a good idea). The manager does not observe the state; she only sees a noisy signal correlated with it. In every equilibrium, the ability of the researcher determines the prior probability assigned by the manager to the state being good, and whether the signal is used in making an inference about the state. I assume that the manager cannot implement contingent contracts, but she can replace the researcher. She will do so if she thinks the researcher did not take the correct action given the state. I show that, in several situations, only when less able, the researcher may take expensive actions today to achieve the good state tomorrow. |
