The authors analyze a dynamic North-South model of innovation, technology transfer, and trade. Northern firms conduct R&D using labor, which has alternative uses producing in the R&D sector or a nontraded good sector. Since technology trans fer prevents the North from fully appropriating benefits of R&D, the optimal rate of innovation for either profit-maximizing firms or a ut ility-maximizing northern planner is less than globally optimal. An i nceased transfer rate intensifies competition of lower wage southern workers with northern workers in production, so profit-maximizing Nor thern firms reallocate labor toward R&D.

Proponents of the Bayh-Dole Act argue that industrial use of federally funded research would be reduced without university patent licensing. Our survey of U.S. universities supports this view, emphasizing the embryonic state of most technologies licensed and the need for inventor cooperation in commercialization. Thus, for most university inventions, there is a moral-hazard problem with inventor effort. For such inventions, development does not occur unless the inventor's income is tied to the licensee's output by payments such as royalties or equity. Sponsored research from the licensee cannot by itself solve this problem.