Placement Director: Vijay Krishna
    (814) 863-8543
    vkrishna@psu.edu

Contact Information:
Dmitry Prudnichenko
  Office: (814) 865-1108
  Cell: (814)
E-mail: dap252@psu.edu
Website:

CITIZENSHIP:

• Russia (F-1 visa)

EDUCATION:

• PhD 2008 (expected), Economics, the Pennsylvania State University, Expected
• MA 2002, Economics, the New Economic School (Moscow)
• BA 1999, Economics, the Novosibirsk State University

PH.D. THESIS:

• The extent of cooperation in R&D and optimal antitrust  legislation (Job market paper)
  Thesis Advisor: Professor Kalyan Chatterjee

FIELDS:

• Primary: Industrial organization
• Secondary: Game theory

PAPERS:

• 2007, The extent of cooperation in R&D and optimal antitrust legislation ( Job market paper)
• 2006, The impact of competition and research costs on firms' willingness to cooperate in R&D.
• 2007, Forward induction in the prisoners' dilemma (in progress)
• 2002, A role of government in the technology diffusion, Moscow, NES, pp. 1-28

TEACHING EXPERIENCE:

• Graduate Instructor of Money and Banking (Summer 2007 and Summer 2006)
• Graduate Instructor of International Trade (Summer 2004)

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE:

• Pennsylvania State University Summer Research Project, 2005
• Ford Foundation, National Training Foundation, and World Bank Research Project , 2002

REFERENCES:

• Professor Kalyan Chatterjee, (814) 865-6050
• Professor Edward Green, (814) 865-8493
• Professor Anthony Kwasnica, (814) 863-0542.

THESIS ABSTRACT

The thesis consists of two related papers. I examine R&D cooperation in a context where the government sets rules on the extent of firm cooperation (in R&D or in both R&D and production) and firms make non-contractible investments in acquiring specific knowledge The basic theoretical point of difference in my work is that a firm finds it easier (i.e. less costly) to acquire knowledge in areas closer to his or her own existing specialty. The model is a non-cooperative game and I look at Pareto-dominant, symmetric subgame perfect equilibria. The nature of equilibrium depends on two parameters, one reflecting the cost of investment and another reflecting firms' market power in the goods market. The goods market is specified in two cases: firms compete in one market or they compete in two separated markets. Both specifications of the model lead to the same main results: If the cost of research is high, then government does not restrict cooperation to increase the probability of a successful innovation even though anti-competitive effects in the goods market arise. If the cost of the research project is neither high nor low and firms have sufficient market power, then government outlaws cooperation in production to stimulate cooperation only in R&D. This eliminates both duplication of research efforts and anti-competitive effects. If the cost of research is low, then cooperation only in R&D without cooperation in production is not sustainable and government forbids all types of cooperation because anticompetitive effects are dominant. The antitrust policy appears to be limited in achieving equilibria in which firms cooperate only in R&D but compete in production. Raising taxes in the goods market may be a useful tool to increase both social welfare and firms' profits because it increases effective cost of acquiring specific knowledge, making deviations from cooperative agreements unprofitable. This analysis also shows that because of strategic reasons the problem of the duplication of research efforts may still remain unsolved even when firms cooperate. The results, which I obtained, may explain some empirical puzzles and can be valuable for implementation of antitrust legislation.