PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Current paper analyses the influence of the length of production technologies life-cycles on the relative intensity of investments of a multi-product monopolist into different types of innovations. This monopolist is developing new versions of the basic product continuously and simultaneously invests into the production technologies of all these new products. In the paper the finite character of these products' life-cycles is assumed. These finite life-cycles are treated for the purposes of the paper as patents which are granted to the monopolist for the production and upgrading of every new product he/she introduces into the market. It is demonstrated that under the condition of finite-time life-cycles of new products the monopolist prefers to invest into process innovations for already introduced products rather than introducing the new ones in relative measure. It is argued, that this is not the case under infinite life-cycles for all these products where the monopolist invests relatively the same amounts into both types of innovations.