Current research

Work in progress. 

“Rethinking Directed Technical Change: When Substitution Leads to Regret.”

with Biggi G., Giuliani E., and Martinelli A.

This paper is accepted for presentation at DRUID 2025 Conference and Concordi 2025.

Working paper available here.

Earlier research using the directed technical change framework argues that with the right mix of policies, governments can steer firms’ R&D efforts away from harmful technologies toward supposedly cleaner alternatives. This article puts that assumption to the test by examining the impact of the 2004 Stockholm Convention, which banned 12 highly toxic persistent organic pollutants (POPs), on the development of alternative chemical compounds. Does regulation truly drive innovation toward safer substitutes, or does it create new risks under a different guise? Our results show that rather than steering innovation towards safer alternatives, the Stockholm Convention has incentivized the development of patents containing s.c. “regrettable” chemicals – i.e. chemicals that, while not banned under the Convention, exhibit POP-like characteristics, particularly high toxicity and persistence. Our study suggests that a closer inspection of the substitute technologies is crucial to understanding the effectiveness of incentives set to replace dirty technologies with cleaner ones. 

Work in progress. 

As part of the PRIN PNRR project "Breakthrough innovation and learning by failure in the medical device industry". 

“Beyond Success: The Impact of Innovation Failures and Coping Strategies in the Medical Device Industry”. 

with Martinelli A., Minischetti E., and Murgia G. 

This paper is accepted for presentation at DRUID 2025 Conference and SIE 2025 Conference. 

This study examines the impact of medical device (MD) recalls—a form of product failure—on firms' subsequent innovation and product development. Using a novel dataset of approved medical devices and recalls at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States from 2002 to 2021, complemented by firm- and patent-level data, we examine how firms adjust their strategic behavior in response to recalls.  To this end, we construct a concordance table linking the product classes used by the FDA to the International Patent Classification (IPC) system. Our findings indicate that recalls lead to a notable decline in innovation and product development within the recalled product class. Furthermore, we find that firms’ degree of product diversification plays a positive moderating role in mitigating these negative effects. These results underscore the nuanced relationship between product failures and innovation and  highlight the role of product diversification in enhancing firms’ resilience.

Work in progress. 

“From open warfare to strawman’s anonymity: Motives and strategies behind patent opposition at EPO”. 

with Bekkers R. and Martinelli A.

Paper presented at 9th ZEW/MaCCI Conference.

Patent opposition allows any firm to challenge the validity of newly granted patents. However, initiating this procedure discloses strategic information to competitors that firms might want to avoid, particularly so when the opponent firm is off the radar of its competitor. This creates a trade-off between the possibility to invalidate a competitor's patent and the disclosure of valuable and strategic information. We study this trade-off by investigating the cases in which firms challenge competitor's patent anonymously, engaging a ``strawman''.  Using a novel dataset of patents opposed at the European Patent Office (EPO) between 2000 and 2017, combined with firm-level information, we assess what drives a firm to engage in this strategy. We find that firms hide behind a strawman and anonymously attack patent owners to prevent signalling to the patent owner their interest in a field that is marginal to their core activity.

Work in progress. 

“Social norms or informal know how trading? Knowledge transfer among haute cousine chefs”. 

with Danna R., Martinelli A., and Nuvolari A.

Paper presented at EPIP 2024 Conference. 

Cooking recipes are among the items that are not effectively covered by current IP law. According to the standard theory of IP, if a sector lacks IP incentives, it should show low levels of creativity and innovation. However, haute cuisine seems to be an industry with vibrant levels of creativity despite the absence of IP incentives. In this paper we investigate how this can be the case by reassessing and expanding the existing literature on haute cuisine as a so-called ‘negative intellectual property space’. Previous studies have argued that chefs address the limited propertisation of creativity offered by current IP law by developing a bottom-up system of IP-like norms. These norms allow chefs to police unwarranted copying and sanction violators. Relying on data collected through an online survey involving Italian haute cuisine chefs, we investigate the practices of knowledge transfer among chefs, with a specific focus on tracing reciprocity patterns within communities and social ties among chefs. By means of a field experiment involving more than 230 Italian chefs, we find a preponderant role of expectations of reciprocity in determining intentions to transfer knowledge to other chefs, but also a significant heterogeneity between restaurants which earned stars and restaurants with no star recognition. Moreover, chefs reveal that imitation is a common and legitimate practice in the field when the original source of the information is acknowledged. A strong majority of our respondents reports that an influential chef has many imitators, and strongly disagrees with the statement that imitation is detrimental to a chef’s business. These findings challenge the view that knowledge sharing among chefs follows an informal system of norms reproducing the incentives of IP law.