Abstract: Can women truly “have it all” — an ambitious career, partner, and children — or are trade-offs inevitable? I investigate this question among patent inventors, a group characterized by lucrative careers, directly observable productivity through patent filings, and a stark underrepresentation of women. My analysis draws on Finnish register data linked to patent records and a matched-control event-study design. I show that the financial returns to patenting are broadly similar across genders in absolute terms, and even larger for women in relative terms. Yet, the family-related costs fall disproportionately on women. Female inventors delay childbearing during the intensive period preceding their first patent filing, and the delay is associated with a long-lasting gap in cumulative fertility. This delaying behavior is consistent with the large, persistent decline in female inventors’ productivity after their first childbirth. By contrast, male inventors show no evidence of career–family trade-offs. My findings suggest that the larger career trade-offs, rather than weaker financial incentives, help explain women’s underrepresentation in innovation.

Abstract: This paper examines how innovation affects firm survival, scale, productivity, and market position by comparing first-time patenting firms to otherwise similar firms that never patent. We further distinguish between granted and rejected patent applications to separate the returns to innovation from those attributable specifically to patent approval. Firms with granted patents exhibit substantially lower exit rates, roughly 15 percentage points lower than unsuccessful applicants, indicating large extensive-margin effects. Beyond survival, granted patents are associated with pronounced intensive-margin responses: firm scale, measured by revenue, value added, and wage bills, is approximately 25-30 log points larger. Firms with rejected patent applications also grow faster than non-patenting peers. In contrast, we find no systematic effects on firm productivity or the capital-labor mix, suggesting that post-innovation growth is driven by the expansion of existing activities. Finally, we document significant gains in industry-level market shares among successfully patenting firms.