New ideas can save and improve lives—whether they are new drugs or new music. But how can new ideas be best encouraged? With the explosion of innovation and the growth of intellectual property creation, policymakers will be faced with increasing questions about the relationship between intellectual property protection and innovation.

Professor Jean Tirole is scientific director of the Institut d'Economie Industrielle, University of Social Sciences, Toulouse. He is affiliated with CERAS, Paris and MIT, where he has been a professor of economics and holds a visiting position. Professor Tirole is also president of the European Economic Association. In 1998, he was president of the Econometric Society, whose executive committee he has served on since 1993.

Professor Tirole received his PhD in economics from MIT; engineering degrees from Ecole Polytechnique, Paris and from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, Paris; and a ``Doctorat de 3ème cycle'' in decision mathematics from the University Paris IX. He has been a Sloan Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow and is a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He has given several invited lectures, including the Hicks lecture at Oxford; the Walras-Pareto lectures in Lausanne; the Pazner lecture in Tel Aviv; the JMCB lecture; the Munich lectures; the Wicksell lectures; the Baffi lecture; and is scheduled to give the Scribner lectures at Princeton in 2002.

Professor Tirole is the author of six books, including The Theory of Industrial Organization, Game Theory (with Drew Fudenberg), A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation (with Jean-Jacques Laffont) ,The Prudential Regulation of Banks (with Mathias Dewatripont),and Competition in Telecommunications (with Jean-Jacques Laffont).

Dr. Padilla is currently with the National Economic Research Associates in Madrid. Dr. Padilla is a Professor of Economics (currently on leave) at the Centro de Estudios Monetarios y Financieros (CEMFI) in Madrid, and a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London. Dr. Padilla has also been a visiting professor at Bocconi University; MIT’s Sloan School of Management; the London School of Economics; and Boston University.

He earned his M. Phil and D. Phil degrees in Economics from Oxford University, where he was awarded the George Webb Medlay Medal.

Dr. Padilla is and has been member of the editorial boards of the Review of Economic Studies, the Spanish Economic Review and Investigaciones Económicas (which he directed for more than three years). He has published papers on competition policy, industrial organization, corporate finance, and banking in academic journals such as the Economic Journal; European Competition Law Review; European Economic Review; International Journal of Industrial Organization; Journal of Economic Management and Strategy; Journal of Economic Theory; RAND Journal of Economics; Review of Financial Studies; and the Spanish Economic Review. He has also published articles in newspapers, such as Expansión, Diario Economico, and Cinco Días.

Dr. Padilla has, among other places, previously given lectures at CERAS; the International Monetary Fund; the University of Bilbao; the University of Naples; the University of Lausanne; and the University of Salerno.