Why and When Should Research Consortia Form?
In my paper “Membership in a Research Consortium: A Cooperative Game Approach” (Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 40 (1999), 325-336), I characterize situations in which firms which are not competitors might benefit from cooperating in a research consortium. I use cooperative game theory to build a stylized model of a consortium. This model is also conceptually, the public goods problem from economics with the additional property of exclusion. The primary objective of these organizations is of course to lower costs by sharing these costs with the other firms thus avoiding duplication of resources — therein lies the efficiencies generated by cooperation. When funding restrictions in the form of research budgets are not a factor, an advantageous outcome may always be obtained by collaborating with other firms. When funding resources are finite and binding, there are situations where collaboration may not be advantageous for individual firms, though the consortium as a group
