Inventing or Spying? Implications for Growth

An engineer graduates if shederives the obvious implications of her instructor's hints. Butthe patent system rewards only the first to present nonobviousadvancements—ideas similarly skilled engineers are notexpected to invent. If a fraction of the newly invented hintsspill over before the technological advances they entail arecompleted and granted legal protection, the R&D workerswill find it convenient to spend some time searching for eachother's hints instead of creating their own. A simple modificationof the basic Schumpeterian model shows that the larger the skilledpopulation, the larger the relative incentive to spy.