Marek Giebel

Peer-reviewed publications

Do Managerial Incentives Facilitate Anti-Competitive Behavior? Evidence from Collusion

(with Anja Rösner), Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2026, 248, 107625. [open access]

Reaching for the Society: The Commercializing Effects of NASA Technology Licensing

(with Anja Rösner), Research Policy, 2025, 54(10), 105337. [open access]

The Impact of a New Workplace Technology on Employees

(with Alexander Lammers), Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2025, 87(5), 1003-1024. [open access]

Financial Constraints for R&D and Innovation: New Evidence from a Survey Experiment

(with Dirk Czarnitzki), Applied Economics, 2025, 57(56), 9495-9515. [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

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

(Working paper version) (R&R European Economic Review)

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.

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 remains debated. I analyze this relationship by exploiting patent infringement litigation cases filed by patent holders in the United States. The results indicate that patent litigation leads to an increase in follow-on innovation as proxied by forward patent citations. The rise in citations is particularly pronounced during the litigation period, but the relative effect size decreases in the years following case closure. My findings suggest that these effects may be operating at least in part through increased attention to the litigated patent and the information available to potential follow-on patentees, rather than being a direct effect of enforcement itself.

Fiscal Transparency and the Benefits of Government-Funded Research

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

Does enhancing fiscal transparency strengthen 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 evidence of a rise in follow-on innovation building on government-funded inventions following increased transparency. Additional analyses provide evidence consistent with reduced search costs, lower information asymmetries, and signaling of commercial opportunities as mechanisms. 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.

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) (R&R IIC - International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law)

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.

CEO Overconfidence and Collusion

(with Catarina Marvão, Anja Rösner, Giancarlo Spagnolo, Cécile Aubert, and Luís Santos-Pinto)

(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.

Who is a successful entrepreneur, and why?

(with Anders Sørensen )

(Working paper version)

In this paper, we examine who becomes a successful entrepreneur and why. For this purpose, we explore the traits of a firm when it opens and the attributes of entrepreneurs themselves. To analyze these characteristics, we use data from newly incorporated and unincorporated firms in Denmark from 2001-2019 and link them to Danish register data to exploit firm and founder information. When examining who becomes an entrepreneur in the first step, we find that a meaningful model of selection into entrepreneurship cannot be formulated. Next, we investigate the population of founders and their firms. Notably, firm type is crucial for the success of new ventures. Even when a large set of covariates describing the characteristics of the founder is included, the legal form of a limited liability company (LLC) is crucial for success. We then use machine learning methods to identify founders who choose LLC as a legal form and to identify entrepreneurial success. Our results indicate that founders with an entrepreneurial background are likely to open LLCs and that choosing LLCs is crucial for success.

When the Patent Quid Pro Quo is Distorted: Protection-Disclosure Imbalance and Follow-on Innovation

(Working paper version)

How does a distortion of the patent quid pro quo, which grants inventors a temporary monopoly right in exchange for full and clear disclosure of their invention, influence follow-on innovation? We study this using text data from US patent application-grant pairs. To proxy the severity of distortions, we use the magnitude of examiner-induced corrections to application scope-disclosure imbalances, measured as changes in textual characteristics between application and grant. Patent prosecution data allow us to exploit the quasi-random assignment of applications to examiners as a source of variation in detecting scope-disclosure imbalances via Section 112 rejections. Instrumental variable estimates show that granted patents whose underlying applications required larger examiner-induced corrections receive fewer citations. This pattern is consistent with those applications being badly drafted, overly broad, or unclear. It reflects unintentional or strategic distortions of the quid pro quo at the application stage that are associated with fewer forward citations.

Strategic Non-Disclosure in Patents

(with Alexandra Zaby and Diana Heger )

(Working paper version)

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)

A study on patent terms and follow-on inventions

(with Gáetan de Rassenfosse and Alexandra Zaby)

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