| This dissertation examines how individuals and organizations protect themselves against the risk of information leakage when Intellectual Property or legal enforcement are not perfect.; The first chapter addresses the problem faced by innovators who have an idea for a product but must hire employees to bring it to the market. Information leakage implies that the employees become informed of the idea and may attempt to develop the product themselves. The bargaining model presented has a unique symmetric equilibrium in which the innovator appropriates a sizable share of the surplus. The results show that this share stays bounded away from zero even as the number of employees required grows to infinity. Conditions under which monopoly or competition arise on the product market are derived, and, finally, the link between Intellectual Property enforcement and industry performance is discussed.; The second chapter offers a general equilibrium model to analyze the problem of R&D investment of firms that also decide between outsourcing and “in-house” production in the presence of R&D information leakage. A contractor hired by a firm learns the firm's technology and can cause its diffusion to the rest of the market. Despite the fact that the outsourcing market is competitive, when a market for information arises in equilibrium, such a market is always monopolistic. A market for information arises when contractors have a positive but low degree of control on the information. If contractors do not have control on the information, the market splits into a set of technological advanced firms that never outsource and a set of low-tech firms that always outsource. The structure of the equilibria of the model captures several features observable in the management consulting industry.; The third chapter offers a model to study the trade-off between the efficiency enhancements of information exchanges and the risk of information leakage in organizations. Information exchanges can be efficient as, in the absence of legal enforcement, the voluntary disclosure of personal information generates an endogenous enforcement device, and hence can promote cooperation. I show that information exchanges increase cooperation and I find conditions under which in equilibrium hierarchical organizations arises. |
