Marek Giebel

Peer-reviewed publications

The Impact of a New Workplace Technology on Employees (with Alexander Lammers), Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming. [open access]

Financial Constraints for R&D and Innovation: New Evidence from a Survey Experiment (with Dirk Czarnitzki), Applied Economics, forthcoming. [open access]

R&D Investments under Financing Constraints (with Kornelius Kraft), Industry and Innovation, 2024, 31(9), 1141–1168. [open access]

The Effect of Subsidies on R&D in the Financial Crisis—The Role of Financial Constraints of Firms and Banks (with Kornelius Kraft), Industrial and Corporate Change, 2024, 33(5), 1180-1198. [accepted version]

Is More Always Better? External Consultants and Firm Innovation in Emerging Markets, Applied Economics, 2024, 56(54), 6986–7013. [accepted version]

Navigating Uncertainty: Employee Participation Dynamics in Times of Crisis (with Alexander Lammers), LABOUR, 2024, 38(2), 230-255. [open access]

Bank Credit Supply and Firm Innovation Behavior in the Financial Crisis (with Kornelius Kraft), Journal of Banking and Finance, 2020, 121, 105961. [accepted version]

External Financing Constraints and Firm Innovation (with Kornelius Kraft), Journal of Industrial Economics, 2019, 67(1), 91-126.

The Impact of the Financial Crisis on Capital Investments in Innovative Firms (with Kornelius Kraft), Industrial and Corporate Change, 2019, 28(5), 1079-1099.

Other publications

Econ, Patents & Competition in Pharma (with Maria Jose Schmidt-Kessen and Kalpana Tyagi), COMIPinDigiMarkts’ monthly newsletter, COM&IP Insights, 2023, no 2.

External Consultants and Innovation, Academy of Management Proceedings, 2020, 1, 13491.

Is it a good idea to publish during your PhD? Yes, but ..., Nature Behavioural and Social Sciences Community Blog, October 2019.

Digital divide, Knowledge and Innovations, Journal of Information, Information Technology, and Organizations, Vol. 8, 2013, pp. 1-24.

Working papers

Reaching for the Society: The Commercializing Effects of NASA Technology Transfer (with Anja Rösner)

(Working paper version) (R&R Research Policy)

How does technology transfer of government inventions affect follow-on innovation? Being aware of the importance of technology development and commercialization, the United States enacted a group of policies in the 1980s that aimed at promoting the commercializing of government-funded research by licensing. It, however, remains questionable whether patenting and licensing are appropriate tools to spur welfare-improving follow-on innovation. We exploit technology-related information from the NASA Technology Transfer Program that fosters the licensing of NASA technologies by third parties and combine it with United States patent data. We find that exclusive licensing agreements are accompanied by increased levels of subsequent technological developments. These follow-on innovations stem from different entities and locations where distinct technologies are invented, which indicates considerable spillover effects. Consequently, our results imply that commercialization by licensing government inventions is an important policy tool to increase the benefits for society.

Do Managerial Incentives Facilitate Anti-Competitive Behavior? Evidence from Collusion (with Anja Rösner)

(Working paper version) (R&R Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization)

We investigate the relationship between management incentives and collusion. This is particularly important as the manager acts on behalf of the owner and determines the firm strategy. Compensation schemes, intended to overcome the principle-agent problem between shareholders and managers, generally determine their managerial actions. While this is beneficial by aligning managers’ interests with those of the firm’s shareholders, the means to achieve this goal could be detrimental from a social welfare perspective. Our empirical analysis is based on a combination of firm, manager, and cartel data to identify managers' remuneration schemes and cartels within the United States. We show that a higher degree of managers' long-term incentives indeed facilitates and stabilizes collusion. Further analyzing the remuneration schemes of various management positions, we find that the impact is particularly pronounced for non-CEOs and CFOs. Additional results imply that firms run by managers with a higher share of equity compensation or more equity-based risk-taking incentives are more likely to behave anti-competitive.

Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement and Subsequent Innovation - Evidence from Patent Infringement Litigation

(Working paper version) (R&R Journal of Law and Economics)

How does enforcing intellectual property rights affect subsequent innovation? Although one of the main functions of the patent system is to foster innovation, the actual impact of patent rights on innovation is still under debate. I analyze this relationship by exploiting patent infringement litigation cases filed by patent holders in the United States. The results imply that patent litigation leads to considerable spillovers. I show that subsequent innovations increase during the litigation period but that the relative effect size decreases in the years following the closure of the case. My findings indicate that signals about the value of the patent and a reduction of information asymmetries are drivers of spillovers to third parties.

CEO Overconfidence and Collusion (with Catarina Marvão, Anja Rösner, and Giancarlo Spagnolo)

(Working paper version)

This study investigates the relationship between CEO overconfidence and participation in cartels. Using propensity score matching to address potential selection issues, it documents that: (1) CEO overconfidence is positively and significantly associated with cartel involvement; (2) CEO overconfidence precedes and predicts cartel participation, as evidenced by Granger causality analysis; and (3) the likelihood of cartel participation decreases following the departure of an overconfident CEO. These findings suggest that cartel enforcement should focus on the top layer of firm management and on shareholders who provide them incentives. They also suggest that CEO overconfidence could possibly be used as a screen to detect cartels.

Information Disclosure and the Benefits of Government Funded Research (Available upon request)

Does the disclosure of additional information amplify the impact of government-funded research? I investigate this question by exploiting the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 as a source of variation in the accessibility of financial and project-related information. Using a difference-in-differences approach combined with matching, I find that increased transparency led to a rise in follow-on innovation based on publicly funded inventions. Further analysis suggests that reduced search costs, lower information asymmetries, and the signaling of commercial opportunities drive this effect. Spillovers are concentrated in follow-on inventions by non-government funded firms operating in distinct technological areas. These findings underscore the role of information disclosure in increasing the social returns to publicly funded research.

Intellectual Property Rights Protection and Innovation - Evidence from Compensatory Patent Term Adjustments

(Working paper version)

How does the strength of intellectual property rights protection affect innovation? I examine this question in the context of the U.S. patent system, where inventors receive patent term adjustments as compensation for administrative delays at the patent office. Exploiting the quasi-random assignment of patent applications to examiners, I use an instrumental variables approach to identify the causal effect of longer patent terms on follow-on innovation. My findings show that extended patent protection reduces subsequent innovation, with stronger effects as the duration increases. This negative impact is observed for both narrow and broad patents but is more pronounced for those with broader protection. Moreover, shorter patent screening periods and higher patent quality mitigate these adverse effects. Overall, the results suggest that while stronger patent protection benefits inventors, it may impose wider societal costs by hindering cumulative innovation.

Who is a successful entrepreneur, and why? (with Anders Sørensen ) (Available upon request)

The Patent Deal: Striking a Balance Between Protection and Disclosure (with Alexandra Zaby) (Available upon request)

Patent law requires the full, clear, and concise disclosure of an invention in exchange for a temporary monopoly. We investigate the impact of patent scope and disclosure on inventors' follow-on innovation behavior using utility patents filed and granted in the United States Patent and Trademark Office. To analyze this relationship, we exploit the quasi-random assignment of patent applications to examiners as a source of variation in detecting inconsistencies between patent scope and disclosure and its change during patent examination. We find that particularly overclaiming and a lack of clarity in writing are detrimental to follow-on innovation. This indicates that an imbalance between patent scope and disclosure leads to negative welfare effects due to a loss in subsequent innovation.

The Divisional Games, the Case of Teva’s Blockbuster Drug, Copaxone: A Law and Economics Perspective (with Maria Jose Schmidt-Kessen and Kalpana Tyagi) (Working paper version)

Patents offer exclusive proprietary rights to the inventor for a limited duration of time. These rights are a key enabler of innovation, for example, when it comes to the development of new molecules in the pharmaceutical sector. Further, in light of the long regulatory approval, and clinical trials required in the pharmaceuticals sector, there exists a supplementary and extended period of protection for the rightholders. In return, the patent proprietors pledge that the patent-protected knowledge shall enter the public domain, as the product goes off patent. To benefit from this innovation-driven system, and manage their patent portfolio, pharmaceutical companies deploy various patent life-cycle management strategies. Whether these strategic activities are beneficial from an overall welfare perspective and legitimate from a competition law perspective remains contested. This contribution looks at one such strategic patenting activity, namely the commonly deployed divisional patent filing strategy, from an interdisciplinary perspective of economics, strategy, patent law, and competition law. To illustrate the mixed welfare effects of the divisional patenting strategy, we use Teva's Copaxone as a case study.

Strategic Non-Disclosure in Patents (with Alexandra Zaby and Diana Heger )

(Working paper version, new version coming soon)

Patent law requires the full, clear, and concise disclosure of an invention in exchange for the protection of the intellectual property. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the strategic motives to limit knowledge disclosure in patents and how this affects follow-on innovation. Using USPTO patent examination data we use Office actions associated with insufficient disclosure to investigate whether and how the modification of a patent specification in the course of examination impacts follow-on innovation. We find that inventors “game the system” using strategic non-disclosure as a means to reduce follow-on innovation.

Selected work in progress

From Costs to Corporations: Can Lower Startup Costs Enhance Corporate Quantity and Quality? (with Anders Sørensen)

Signaling the Value of an Innovation by (not) Litigating Patent Infringers (with Anette Boom)

Seeking External Advice – Which Firms in Emerging Markets Hire External Consultants? (with Alexander Lammers)

Uncertainty and Patenting (with Anja Rösner)

The Impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Fraudulent Firm Behavior (with Anja Rösner and Benjamin Schröder)

A study on patent terms and follow-on inventions (with Gáetan de Rassenfosse and Alexandra Zaby)

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