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 NASA technologies in the licensing portfolio show a similar follow-on innovation pattern as those that are not. Leveraging the information about the licensing status, we find that an exclusive licensing agreement facilitates subsequent technological developments. Consequently, our results imply that commercialization by licensing government inventions is an important policy tool to increase the benefits for society.

How does the enforcement of intellectual property rights affect subsequent innovation? I analyze this question by exploiting patent infringement litigation cases in the United States initiated by the patent holder to enforce her temporary monopoly right. The results imply that subsequent innovations increase after a case has been filed in court. While there is a strong increase during the litigation period, 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 reductions in asymmetric information are particular drivers of the rise in follow-on innovation. Although there is a general facilitating effect, subsequent innovations have a low degree of quality and follow the same research direction as the litigated patents.

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.

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.

We utilize a new survey experiment to evaluate the existence and degree of financial constraints for R&D in the economy. The experiment does not only allow to deduct the presence of financial constraints, but also to evaluate their economic significance. Using data on German companies, we find that financial constraints for R&D exist but that their relevance might have been overestimated in the literature. Most R&D projects that have not been implemented because of financial constraints turn out to have low expected marginal rates of return. While this findings stands in some contrast to other studies, we also find several results that are in line with the literature: young firms are most constrained and the constraints occur at the intensive margin, i.e. our results do not suggest that non-innovative companies are deterred from innovation. Instead, highly innovative companies are restricted by the capital market.

We exploit the implementation of a new workplace technology as a source of variation in employee outcomes. Utilizing detailed worker-level data for Germany, we show that the strongest impacts of new technologies arise in the first year of its implementation for overtime, training and perceived productivity. These effects diminish after the introduction period. Finally, we show that changes in worker outcomes depend on the nature of the technology as well as occupational choices. Thus, we find that technologies are particularly affecting workers if their introduction is related to increases in workload and mental stress. In addition, workers in high-paying occupations are affected in all of the worker outcomes examined. Among employees in low- and mid-paying occupations, in contrast, there are only particularly strong impacts on overtime and training. The impact on worker outcomes therefore primarily occurs when the new technology shapes the work environment of the exposed worker.