ABSTRACT
Let m identical firms contemplate doing research. First assume a result found by one is equally useful to all and cannot be retained for the finder’s own exclusive use. Each firm can do its own research, or can copy, and use the results found by another. Let copying and using somebody else’s results be cheaper than doing your own original research. This poses a free rider problem. Still, a firm can only be sure of obtaining the desired result by doing research itself. Different models of this situation yield different conclusions. By comparing them we can learn which are reasonable and which are not. I shall show that models based on noncooperation are not reasonable while those based on cooperation are.
