Scholarly and Technical Articles and Books on Innovation Prizes

2010. William Fisher and Talha Syed. Drugs, Law, and the Health Crisis in the Developing World. Stanford University Press. [link]
Chapter 10 of this book is on prizes, and is available online.

2010. Deborah D. Stine. Federally Funded Innovation Inducement Prizes. Congressional Research Service. [link 1] [link 2]

2010. Akira Takeishi, Yaichi Aoshima and Masaru Karube. “Reasons for Innovation: Legitimizing Resource Mobilization for Innovation in the Cases of the Okochi Memorial Prize Winners” in Dynamics of Knowledge, Corporate Systems and Innovation. Springerlink. [link]
Drawing on 18 case studies of Okochi Memorial Prize winners and building upon the existing literature on internal corporate venturing, new ventures, and other related issues, this chapter examines the innovation process of established Japanese firms from idea generation to commercialization with a primary focus on the process by which resource mobilization was legitimized.

2010 August 24. Brad Rourke. “Promoting Innovation: Prizes, Challenges and Open Grantmaking.” The Case Foundation. [link]
In spring 2010, the Case Foundation together with the White House Domestic Policy Council and the White House Office on Science and Technology Policy hosted a public-private strategy session focused on promoting innovation through the use of prizes, challenges and open grantmaking. This report is a brief summary of highlights, lessons and findings from the conference.

2010 August 9. “The Merits of Innovation Prizes.” African Technology Development Forum. [link]

2010 August 5. “Innovation Prizes: And the Winner Is…”. The Economist. [link]

2010 July 30. James Pethokoukis. “Why Washington Should Embrace Innovation Prizes.” Reuters. [link]

2010 May 3. Jonathan H. Adler. “Eyes on a Climate Prize: Rewarding Energy Innovation to Achieve Climate Stabilization.” Harvard Environmental Law Review. [link]

2010 April 30. Joel Achenbach. “Government contests offer different way to find solutions for problems.” The Washington Post. [link]

2009. James Love and Tim Hubbard. “Prizes for Innovation of New Medicines and Vaccines.” 18 Annals Health L. 155. [link]

2009. Ian E. Maxwell. “Chapter 15. Prize Innovation” in Managing Sustainable Innovation: The Driver for Global Growth. Springer. [link]

2009 August. V. V. Chari, Mikhail Golosov, and Aleh Tsyvinski. “Prizes and Patents: Using Market Signals to Provide Incentives for Innovations.” Working Paper 673, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Research Department. [link]

2009 June 3. Sara E. Crager and Matt Price. “Prizes and Parasites: Incentive Models for Addressing Chagas Disease.” The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics, Volume 37, Issue 2. pp 292–304. Summer 2009 (Wiley). [link]

2009 June 10. Talha Syed. “Should a Prize System for Pharmaceuticals Require Patent Protection for Eligibility?”. IGH Discussion Paper No. 2. [link]

2008. Aidan Hollis. “The Health Impact Fund: A Useful Supplement to the Patent System?”. Public Health Ethics 1(2), pp 124-133. Oxford University Press. [link]

2008 December. Paul Hynek. “The Hyper-Commons: How Open Science Prizes Can Expand and Level the Medical Research Playing Field.” Rejuvenation Research. 11(6): 1065-1072. [link]

2008 September. Qiang Fuy, Jingfeng Luz, Yuanzhu Lux. “The Optimal Research Contest: Subsidies or Prizes.” [link]

2008 Fall. Jaison G. Morgan. “Inducing Innovation Through Prizes.” Innovations. Vol. 3. No. 4. pp 105-117. MIT Press. [link]

2008 April 19. James Love. “University Patent Managers Versus Developing Countries.” The Huffington Post. [link]

2008 March 26. James Love. “Prizes, not prices, to stimulate antibiotic R&D.” SciDev.net [link]

2008 March 7. ” Selected Innovation Prizes and Reward Programs,” KEI Research Note 2008:1 [link]

2008 February. Ron Marchant. “Managing Prize Systems: Some Thoughts on the Options.” KEStudies, Vol. 2 (2008) [link]

2008 January 25. Tim Harford. “Cash for Answers.” Financial Times. [link]

2008 January 24. Liam Brunt, Josh Lerner,s and Tom Nicholas. “Inducement Prizes and Innovation.” Harvard Business School. [link]

2007. Marlynn Wei. “Should Prizes Replace Patents? A Critique of the Medical Innovation Prize Act of 2005.” Boston University Journal of Science & Technology Law. [link 1] [link 2]
Argues that the Medical Innovation Prize Fund Act is too ambitious “relative to the lack of support in empirical evidence.” Proposes implementation of a smaller scale pilot prize program to test and perfect the system.

2007. Thomas C. Erren. “Prizes to Solve Problems in and beyond Medicine, Big and Small: It Can Work.” Medical Hypotheses (2007) 68, 732-734.

2007. Bruce G. Charlton. “Mega-Prizes in Medicine: Big Cash Awards May Stimulate Useful and Rapid Therapeutic Innovation.” Medical Hypotheses (2007) 68, 1-3.

2007. Board on Science, Technology and Economic Policy (STEP). “Innovation Inducement Prizes at the National Science Foundation.” National Academies Press. [link]

2007 November. Vincenzo Denicolo and Luigi Alberto Franzoni. “On the winner-take-all principle in innovation races.” University of Bologna, Italy. [link]

2007 November. James Love and Tim Hubbard. “The Big Idea: Prizes to Stimulate R&D for New Medicines.” Chicago-Kent Law Review Vol. 82 no. 3. Previously published as KEI Research Paper 2007:1. [link]
Discusses the efforts to change the business model for new drug development by eliminating monopolies to sell products with systems of prizes linked to the impact of new medicines on health care outcomes. This includes examining models for medical innovation prizes in different markets, including the U.S., Europe and in developing countries.

November 12. James Love. “Would cash prizes promote cheap drugs?” The New Scientist. [link]

2007 October. J A DiMasi and H G Grabowski. “Should the Patent System for New Medicines Be Abolished?” Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics (2007) 82 (5), 488–490.
Criticism of the use of prizes to stimulate R&D.

2007 September 30. KEI Comment to the World Health Organization (WHO) Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights, “The Role of Prizes in Stimulating R&D.” [link]

2007 June. Aidan Hollis. “Incentive Mechanisms for Innovation. Institute for Advanced Policy Research Technical Paper TP-07005.
A comparison of patents, research grants, targeted prizes, and ex post prizes and an exploration of their interaction. Introduces a new incentive mechanism for innovation, provisionally labeled optional broad rewards (OBRs). [link]

2007 March. James Love. “Measures to Enhance Access to Medical Technologies, and New Methods of Stimulating Medical R&D. Published in the UC Davis Law Review, 40(3):679-715. Originally a paper for the WIPO Open Forum on the Draft Substantive Patent Law Treaty (SPLT) 18 April 2006. [link]
Section II(A) details the 2005 Medical Innovation Prize Fund and offers proposals on how to tailor it to the needs of developed, developing, and least developed countries.

2007 March. Carl Nathan. “Aligning Pharmaceutical Innovation with Medical Need.” Nature Medicine. 13(3):304-8.

2006 December 23. Joseph Stiglitz. “Scrooge and Intellectual Property Rights: A medical prize fund could improve the financing of drug innovations.” British Medical Journal. 333:1279-80. [link]

2006 December. Gerard Llobet, Hugo Hopenhayn, and Matthew Mitchell. “Rewarding Sequential Innovators: Prizes, Patents and Buyouts.” Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(6), pages 1041-1068. Previously published as the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Research Department Staff Report 273. [link]
Considers cumulative innovation with multiple innovators and innovations of unknown value. In such cases, the authors argue that a revised patent system that permits compulsory licensing by competitors would be preferable to prizes and traditional patents.

2006 December. Thomas Kalil. “Prizes for Technological Innovation.” Brookings Institution Discussion Paper. [link]

2006 December. Hugo Hopenhayn, Gerard Llobet, and Matthew Mitchell. “Rewarding Sequential Innovators: Prizes, Patents and Buyouts.” Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(6), pages 1041-1068. Originally published July 2000 as Research Department Staff Report 273 for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. [link]

2006 September 16. Joseph Stiglitz. “Give Prizes, Not Patents.” New Scientist, p. 21. [link]
On the importance of access to knowledge globally, especially as relates to pharmaceuticals, with a brief history of the new “enclosure movement” through the 1994 Uruguay Round and the TRIPS agreement.

2006 August. Berndt, Glennerster, Kremer, Lee, Levine, Weizsäcker, Williams. “Advance Market Commitments for Vaccines Against Neglected Diseases: Estimating Costs and Effectiveness.” Center for Global Development Working Paper number 98. [link]
A discussion of an AMC in which sponsors would commit to a minimum per capita price for suitable immunizations, up to a certain number of patients, as well as of various model contracts and how they would alter the cost-effectiveness of vaccines. Discussion of the size of such a fund, with adjustments of marketing cost and levels of risk under the terms of various arrangements.

2006 May. James Love. “Drug development incentives to improve access to essential medicines. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 84(5). [link]
Proposal for a Medical Innovation Prize Fund and new global trade framework as alternatives that better accommodate a human right to essential medicines.

2006 February. Rachel Glennerster, Michael Kremer, and Heidi Williams. “Creating Markets for Vaccines Innovations Case Discussion: International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.” Innovations, winter 2006, pp. 67-79. [link]
A proposal to use Advanced Market Commitments to incentivize private sector R&D of products for diseases concentrated in poor countries. The paper includes a discussion of market failures for vaccines, an overview of the roles of push and pull mechanisms in developing new vaccines, and a possible structure for an AMC.

2006 January. William M. Butterfield. “Facilitate Institutional Development, Win a Prize! How the World Bank and Other Donors Could Help Overcome Barriers to Growth.” Paper for the 2006 Public Choice Society Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, Louisiana, March 10–13, 2005. [link]

2006. Joseph Stiglitz. “Patents, Profits, and People.” In Making Globalization Work. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 103-132.

2006. Kevin Outterson. “Patent Buy-Outs for Global Disease Innovations for Low and Middle-Income Countries.” American Journal of Law and Medicine, Vol. 32. [link]

2006. William A. Masters. “Prizes for Innovation in African Agriculture: A Framework Document.” Center on Globalization and Sustainable Development, The Earth Institute at Columbia University. [link]
Considers cumulative innovation with multiple innovators and innovations of unknown value. In such cases, the authors argue that a revised patent system that permits compulsory licensing by competitors would be preferable to prizes and traditional patents.

2006. Juri Saar. “Prizes: The Neglected Innovation Incentive.” ESST: The European Inter-University Association on Society, Science and Technology. [link]

2006. Jaffe, A. “The Millennium Grand Challenge in Mathematics.” Notices of the American Mathematical Society 53:6 652-660.
A history of the evolution of the Millenium Grand Challenge, written by Arthur Jaffe, president of the American Mathematical Society when the prize idea was first proposed. [link]

2006. Gray, Jeremy. “A History of Prizes in Mathematics” in: The Millennium Prize Problems by James A. Carlson, Arthur Jaffe, Andrew Wiles. Providence, RI: The American Mathematical Society (2006). 169 pages.
A thorough overview of historical math prizes as an introduction to essays on the seven Millenium Grand Challenges in Mathematics, sponsored by the Clay Mathematics Institute.

2006. Barder, Owen; Kremer, Michael; and Williams, Heidi. “Advance Market Commitments: A Policy to Stimulate Investment in Vaccines for Neglected Diseases.” The Economists’ Voice: Vol. 3 : Iss. 3, Article 1. [link]
This paper advocates a proposal for Advance Market Commitments to be piloted by the G8 finance ministers in 2006.

2005. William A. Masters. “Research prizes: a new kind of incentive for innovation in African agriculture.” International Journal of Biotechnology Volume 7, Numbers 1-3 / 2005: 195 – 211.

2005 November 3. “Making Markets for Vaccines: A Practical Plan.” The Center for Global Development and The Global Health Policy Research Network. Consultation Draft Report of the Working Group, submission to the WHO. [link]
The conclusions of a working group on Advanced Market Commitments which concludes that AMCs “would be likely to accelerate development and delivery of new vaccines and that it could be implemented in practice” and “sets out in detail how a commitment could be designed: how it would be constructed in law, the main principles of the contract, and how sponsors could make the necessary funding commitments.”

2005 June 21. Thomas Pogge. “A New Approach to Pharmaceutical Innovations.” Online Opinion. [link]

2005 May 27. John S. James. “Medical innovation prize fund: new idea in drug development.” AIDS Treatment News. Issue 412. Page 6(1).

2005 May 18. Sanders, Representative Bernard. United States Congressional Record. Extensions of Remarks, E149. Medical Innovation Prize Fund. [link]

2005 April 7. Molly K. Macauley. “Advantages and disadvantages of prizes in a portfolio of financial incentives for space activities.” Resources for the Future.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has proposed to use financial prizes to encourage innovation in space technology. Public debate about the use of prizes questions their effectiveness, the role of government compared with the private sector in administering prizes—for example, the Ansari X-Prize for human suborbital flight was privately funded and administered—and other issues that are likely to influence the success of this approach.

2005. S. Birner and E. Martinot. “Market transformation for energy-efficient products: Lessons from programs in developing countries.” Energy Policy vol. 33, pp:1765–1779. [link]
Includes an overview of a Chinese Government prize program to stimulate innovation in the energy-efficient refrigerator market.

2005 February 1. Julien Penin. “Patents versus ex post rewards: A new look.” Research Policy vol. 34, pp. 641-656.

2005 January 17. Aidan Hollis. “An Efficient Reward System for Pharmaceutical Innovation.” [link]
Discusses benefits of a pharmaceutical reward system over current patent system. Explains features of the pharmaceutical market that make profits poor indicators of a drug’s social value.

2005 January 5. Berndt, Glennerster, Kremer, Lee, Levine, Weizsäcker, Williams. “Advance Markets for a Malaria Vaccine: Estimating Costs and Effectiveness.” [link]
A proposal for an Advance Market Commitment for the development of a Malaria vaccine, including a discussion of the monetary amount required to approximate revenues for typical commercial pharmaceutical products, and of the degree to which the price and volume would determine the cost-effectiveness of such a vaccine. The authors analyze characteristics of a hypothetical vaccine to show that cost-effectiveness varies only slightly depending on the type of vaccine, but that the duration of protection strongly affects potential cost-effectiveness.

2005. Aidan Hollis. “An Optional Reward System for Neglected Disease Drugs.” Department of Economics, University of Calgary; Institute of Health Economics. [link]
Proposes that pharmaceutical innovators be eligible for a share of an approximately $1 billion global reward fund if they chose to open license the patent for their innovation in all developing countries. Proposes a mechanism for determining reward shares for a given drug based on relative social value.

2005 January. Thomas Pogge. “Human Rights and Global Health: A Research Program.” Metaphilosophy. 1/2(36). [link]
Proposes a global reward fund of $45-90 billion per year from which pharmaceutical innovators could choose to apply for payment in lieu of a patent monopoly. Emphasizes the moral as well as prudential rationale for such a system.

2005. James Love. “Medical Innovation Prize Fund System of Remuneration.” In Remuneration Guidelines for Non-Voluntary Use of a Patent on Medical Technologies. James Love. WHO UNDP. 77-80 and 101-104. [link]
Includes a section on an international medical innovation prize fund. Considers levels of prize contribution by countries of various incomes, as well as the compatibility of such a fund with the TRIPS Agreement. Table A-3 in the appendix of the UNDP paper provides the amount each country would contribute to an international prize fund under a proposed sliding scale model.

2005. James Love and Tim Hubbard. “Paying for Public Goods.” In Code: Collaborative Ownership and the Digital Economy. Edited by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. MIT Press, Cambridge. 207-229. [link]
The second section describes the inefficiencies of market exclusivity for drugs, and proposes an alternative system in which ‘competitive intermediators’ dispense funds to promote innovation according to the model (prizes, grants, etc.) the intermediator judges to be most efficient.

2005. Richard Newell and Nathan Wilson. “Technology Prizes for Climate Change Mitigation.” Resources for the Future Discussion Paper 05-33. [link]
Though the main purpose is to explore prizes related to climate change, discussion emphasizes general prize design and implementation.

2005. B. Zorina Khan and Kenneth L. Sokoloff. “Of Patents and Prizes: Great Inventors and the Evolution of Useful Knowledge in Britain and the United States, 1790-1930.” University of California, Los Angeles and NBER [link]

2005. B. Zorina Khan. The Democratization of Invention: Patents and Copyrights in American Economic Development. NBER and Cambridge University Press.
Contains details on a variety of prizes in France.

2005. Ken Davidian. “Prize Competitions and NASA’s Centennial Challenges Program.” Paper presented at the International Lunar Conference 2005.

2005. James F. English. The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, And the Circulation of Cultural Value. Harvard University Press (2005).
Focusing on the modern forms of prizes as they relate to recognition in literature and the arts, English studies “the specific workings of prizes, their elaborate mechanics of nomination and election, presentation and acceptance, sponsorship, publicity, and scandal.”

2004 December. Alex Schroeder. “The Application and Administration of Inducement Prizes in Technology.” Independence Institute Research Paper. [link]

2004 September 22. Dean Baker. “Financing Drug Research: What are the Issues?” Issue Brief, Center for Economic and Policy Research. [link]
Argues that a proposed global prize system could face problems with political interference in research priorities.

2004 July 15. “NASA Contests and Prizes: How Can They Help Advance Space Exploration.” Hearing before the United States Congress, House Committee on Science, Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, 108th Congress, Second Session. [link]

2004 July 15. Molly Macauley. “Advantages and Disadvantages of Prizes in a Portfolio of Financial Incentives for Space Activities.” Testimony prepared for presentation to the U.S. Congress House of Representatives Committee on Science. [link]

2004 June 25. Joseph DiMasi and Henry Grabowski. “Patents and R&D Incentives: Comments on the Hubbard and Love Trade Framework for Financing Pharmaceutical R&D.” [link]
Argues that a global pharmaceutical prize system would have difficulty with free rider countries and adjusting the size of the fund to reflect changing priorities. Also suggests that a U.S. prize system would be expensive and face pressures to under-fund innovation.

2004. John F Duffy. “The Marginal Cost Controversy in Intellectual Property.” University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 71, No. 1. [link]

2004. Lee Davis. “Intellectual Property Rights, Strategy and Policy.” Economics of Innovation and New Technology. (13)5: 399-415. [link]
Argues that technological, social, and legal trends make prizes and other alternatives to standard patents increasingly attractive.

2004. Lee Davis and Jerome Davis. “How Effective Are Prizes as Incentives to Innovation? Evidence from Three 20th Century Contests.” Paper for the DRUID Summer Conference on Industrial Dynamics, Innovation and Development. Elsinore, Denmark [link].
A paper which briefly explores the nature of prizes as incentives, presents three case studies to illustrate key differences in the dynamics of innovation depending on the field in which the prize was deemed necessary, and considers the implications of their findings on theoretical approaches to prizes, especially as regards determining the value of the prize, resource duplication, sequential innovations, spillovers and reputation signaling effects, and simultaneous prize and patent competitions.