We highlight conditions under which R&D agreements may harm consumers by increasing final prices. This occurs although members of the R&D agreement increase their R&D efforts. We focus on cases where firms compete both on the final market and to buy an input necessary for R&D. The market is composed of a competitive fringe and two strategic firms that enjoy a first mover advantage on both markets. By increasing its R&D input purchase, a strategic firm increases the cost of all its rivals and in particular deters entry in the fringe. This reduces downstream competition and increases the final price. Therefore, an R&D agreement may induce strategic overbuying of R&D input by members of the agreement at the expense of rival firms and consumers.

This article analyzes the effects of international trade policies on an imperfectly competitive domestic market, taking account of consumers, as well as upstream and downstream firms. We first study the impact of a classic import tax decrease and find that this policy harms upstream firms and may decrease domestic fiscal revenues. We then examine the effect of an increase in non-tariff barriers, which reduce the degree of substitutability between domestic and imported goods. This results in an improvement in each agent's situation, as international competition becomes less fierce. Finally, we show that market conditions may exist such that a coupled policy (import tax decrease and non-tariff barrier increase) makes all agents better off. This can explain the proliferation of domestic standards at national level in order to counterbalance the effect of lower tariffs negotiated by governments.

L'innovation est devenue un facteur clé de la croissance économique. La question des incitations à l'innovation au sein des entreprises est donc primordiale. Dans ce papier, nous nous intéressons au type d'incitations monétaires reçues par les inventeurs au sein des entreprises avec une attention particulière à la mobilité inter-entreprise de ces derniers. Les résultats montrent un rendement salarial positif pour les inventeurs, celui-ci est plus important pour les inventeurs ayant connu une mobilité inter-entreprise, ce qui pourrait suggérer que les entreprises sont prêtes à payer les connaissances acquises par les inventeurs au sein des autres entreprises. Par contre, l'utilisation de stock-options comme incitation pour les inventeurs semble moins répandue dans les entreprises françaises que dans les entreprises étrangères.