• Proceedings of the Technology Innovation Conference
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• 2005.02a
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• pp.42-56
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• 2005

Firms cooperating in R&D face a moral hazard problem, because with R&D effort not being observable each partner will focus on its own profit when choosing its effort level. This paper aims to explain the use of optimal license contract for R&D cooperation such as cross-licensing agreement. We argue that in the situations of asymmetric information, the optimal incentive scheme that can solve moral hazard problem is . a linear function of the likelihood ratio. Especially in the case of parallel research, each firm has an extra incentive for cooperative R&D effort, given by the license fee that considers the profit of the cooperating firm, which solely depends on his R&D success if the cooperating firm fails.