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Historical and Economic Perspectives of the National Cooperative Research Act

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Cooperative Research and Development: The Industry—University—Government Relationship

Abstract

The National Cooperative Research Act of 1984 (NCRA) [1] codified U.S. public policy toward joint ventures in research and development (R&D). It provided, inter alia, that the behavior of a research consortium, if challenged under the U.S. antitrust laws, would be judged under a rule of reason asking whether the alleged restraints of trade were ancillary to the pursuit of efficiency. For those research ventures notifying the government of their participants and purposes, any subsequent antitrust violation would be assessed single, not treble, damages. The historical context of the NCRA is important; the act was passed during a dramatic redirection of U.S. government policy toward business combinations. Uncritical pronouncements about the efficacy of such combinations abounded.

This chapter has benefited from comments by William L. Baldwin, Meredith O. Clement, Theodore A. Gebhard, Albert N. Link, Geoffrey Woglom, and Everett W. Wood.

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Authors
  1. John T. Scott
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA

    Albert N. Link

  2. National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA

    Gregory Tassey

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© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Scott, J.T. (1989). Historical and Economic Perspectives of the National Cooperative Research Act. In: Link, A.N., Tassey, G. (eds) Cooperative Research and Development: The Industry—University—Government Relationship. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2522-9_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2522-9_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-7639-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-2522-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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