Overview
2006
In today's state-of-art, science-based industries, of which the semiconductor industry is a leading example, complex cooperative relationships at the research and development (R&D) stage have been observed between companies that compete in their product markets, owing to factors such as increases in the size of investment necessary and the enlargement of the scope, growing complexity, and acceleration of R&D. Of particular note is that there has been growing interest in collaboration mechanisms that have until now been treated as black boxes in conventional economic theory, the reason being that R&D processes have come to be conducted across firm boundaries rather than kept within a single company, and there is increasing recognition of the necessity of understanding what types of communication, coordination, and collaboration mechanism are effective as well as incentive-compatible. Our research aims to address these issues from the viewpoints of the economics of information, game theory, and behavioral economics.
