combining valuable inventions exploring the impact of prior invention value on the performance of subsequent inventions innovation research widely acknowledges that most inventions are recombinations of existing ideas and technologies following this stream of research this study analyses how the values of prior inventions used to develop a subsequent invention influence the value of the new invention building on evolutionary theory and research on technological search and technological paradigms this article proposes a positive relationship between prior inventions value and subsequent invention value the analysis of a large scale patent data set of pharmaceutical and semiconductor firms largely confirms this notion however it also shows that the effect weakens when prior inventions are of higher value valuable prior inventions are also positively related to the likelihood that subsequent inventions are breakthroughs however while this effect also decreases when prior inventions hold higher values the decreasing effect occurs only at particularly high levels of prior invention value in contrast combining valuable inventions limits the likelihood of generating poor invention outcomes value in summary while the results lend support to theories of evolutionary and cumulative technological progress they also show that despite the recombination potential of technical knowledge there are practical limits to the benefits of valuable inputs

the economic complexity of technology and innovation the nature of technology what it is and how it evolves brian w arthur free press new york ny 2009 v 247 pp us 27 00 hbk isbn 978 1 4165 4405 0 technology has been a problematic and

collateral damage for r d manufacturers how patent sharks operate in markets for technology patent sharks small firms that exploit information asymmetries in markets for technology to gain patent based competitive advantages challenge established theory by which i markets for technology benefit large firms and ii intellectual property rights systems strictly support markets for technology empirically linking the sharks different assault strategies to the patents they deploy we illustrate that patent sharks will likely be an enduring phenomenon in markets for technology we discuss policy and strategy implications copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

general technological capabilities product market fragmentation and markets for technology abstract the combination of a firm capability i e ability to generate general purpose technologies and a market structure condition i e fragmentation of downstream submarkets may encourage licensing in an industry that is the probability of licensing should increase when product markets are fragmented and technologies support general purposes evidence consistent with these predictions emerges from a 1993 to 2001 panel of 87 firms that owned at least one u s software security patent between 1976 and 2001 the analysis uncovers some fundamental characteristics of how external knowledge exploitation functions in particular technology markets thrive when product markets are fragmented and firms have the capability to produce general technologies

education and invention abstract modern growth theory puts invention on the center stage inventions are created by individuals raising the question of whether we can increase the number of inventors to answer this question we study the causal effect of msc engineering education on invention using data on u s patents finnish inventors and the distance to the nearest technical university as an instrument we find a positive effect of engineering education on the propensity to patent and a negative ols bias our counterfactual calculation suggests that establishing three new technical universities resulted in a 20 increase in the number of uspto patents by finnish inventors

lone inventors as sources of breakthroughs myth or reality are lone inventors more or less likely to invent breakthroughs recent research has attempted to resolve this question by considering the variance of creative outcome distributions it has implicitly assumed a symmetric thickening or thinning of both tails i e that a greater probability of breakthroughs comes at the cost of a greater probability of failures in contrast we propose that collaboration can have opposite effects at the two extremes it reduces the probability of very poor outcomes because of more rigorous selection processes while simultaneously increasing the probability of extremely successful outcomes because of greater recombinant opportunity in creative search analysis of over half a million patented inventions supports these arguments individuals working alone especially those without affiliation to organizations are less likely to achieve breakthroughs and more likely to invent particularly poor outcomes quantile regressions demonstrate that the effect is more than an upward mean shift we find partial mediation of the effect of collaboration on extreme outcomes by the diversity of technical experience of team members and by the size of team members external collaboration networks supporting our meta argument for the importance of examining each tail of the distribution separately experience diversity helps trim poor outcomes significantly more than it helps create breakthroughs relative to the effect of external networks

mergers acquisitions and innovation performance in the telecommunications equipment industry the worldwide telecommunications equipment industry has experienced an enormous number of mergers and acquisitions m a this article examines the innovation determinants of m a activity a

patent trolls on markets for technology an empirical analysis of npes patent acquisitions abstract patent trolls or npes appropriate profits from innovation solely by enforcing patents against infringers they are often characterized as relying on low quality patents an assessment that if correct would imply that eradicating such patents would effectively terminate the npe business in this paper we shed light on this issue by empirically analyzing npes patent acquisitions we draw on a unique dataset of 392 u s patents acquired by known npes between 1997 and 2006 which we compare to three control groups of 784 u s patents each acquired by practicing firms we find that the probability that a traded patent is acquired by an npe rather than a practicing entity increases in the scope of the patent in the patent density of its technology field and contrary to common belief in the patent s technological quality our findings thus support recent theoretical propositions about the npe business model showing that npes procure patents that are more likely to be infringed harder to substitute for and robust to legal challenges the fact that npe acquired patents are of significantly higher quality than those in the control group implies that elevating minimum patent quality will not put an end to the npe business and suggests that this business is sustainable in the long run we furthermore discuss the fact that npes are peculiar players on markets for technology insofar as they are solely interested in the exclusion right not in the underlying knowledge we posit that transactions involving npes may only be the tip of the iceberg of patent only transactions a conjecture with strong implications for the efficiency and the study of markets for technologies managerial and policy implications are discussed

innovation and firm value an investigation of the changing role of patents 1985 2007 abstract this paper examines how the relationship between firm value and patent based indicators of inventive activity has changed over time we use data from more than 33 000 mergers and acquisitions deals between 1985 and 2007 and distinguish between american uspto and european epo patents our results indicate that over time epo patents have become the dominant indicator of innovative activity while uspto patents have no effect on firm value near the end of the sample period the results are robust to controlling for citations and are especially strong for small firms for firms operating in the drug and chemical industries and when target and acquiring firms operate in different industries or countries

technology as a complex adaptive system evidence from patent data this paper develops a theory of invention by drawing on complex adaptive systems theory we see invention as a process of recombinant search over technology landscapes this framing suggests that inventors might face a complexity catastrophe when they attempt to combine highly interdependent technologies our empirical analysis of patent citation rates supports this expectation our results also suggest however that the process of invention differs in important ways from biological evolution we discuss the implications of these findings for research on technological evolution industrial change and technology strategy 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

technology gap global value chain and carbon intensity evidence from global manufacturing industries abstract the technological progress of a country may mean that its technology gap compared to the frontier has changed which will induce a change in its positioning in the global value chain and affect its carbon intensity using paten data input output database and the global value chain index we employ systematic generalized method of moments quantile regression with panel data and multilevel mediation analysis to measure empirically the impact of the technology gap on carbon intensity and positioning on the global value chain the empirical analysis shows that narrowing the technology gap will reduce significantly a country s carbon intensity further the effect of the technology gap on carbon intensity is more pronounced on industries with higher carbon intensity the mechanism test using the mediation effect model proves that the impact of the technology gap on carbon intensity is achieved by changing in the position of global value chain the findings suggest that a country s carbon intensity performance is not only affected by its own technological progress but also by global frontiers therefore a country should not only pay attention to its own technological progress but also to the development of global frontier technologies and speed of technological progress

credit default swaps has the gfc influenced perceptions of their utility for banks credit default swaps cdss are considered as one of the most versatile financial innovations of the 21st century since its inception the credit derivatives market has grown to a peak of 64 trillion in 2008 in terms of gross notional values cont 2010 however after the onset of the gfc this market has decreased to a large extent while there is evidence that promotes the risk reduction properties of cdss there is a growing body of research post gfc that identifies destabilising effects of these instruments in this paper i review the relevant scholarly literature and provide evidence of how the views on cdss have changed post gfc due a deeper investigation of issues such as systemic risk regulatory arbitrage information asymmetry and risk taking among others in the banking industry this paper provides a survey of the literature of views for and against the use of cdss during pre and post gfc periods and finally concludes that in comparison to the pre gfc period post gfc there is a significant increase in the literature that highlights the detrimental nature of cdss

innovation cycles and learning at the patent office does the early patent get the delay we study the relationship between the length of patent review and the importance of inventions we build a simple model of the u s patent review process among the model predictions are that controlling for a patent s position in a new technology cycle more important innovations would be approved more quickly also the approval delay is likely to decrease as an industry moves from the early stages of an innovation cycle to later stages these predictions are in line with the evidence we obtain from a data set on u s patents granted in the field of genetically modified crops from 1983 to 1999 we also show that failing to account for the innovation lifecycle as previous studies have done is likely to bias upwards the estimates of the relationship between delay and importance 2010 the authors journal compilation 2010 blackwell publishing ltd and the editorial board of the journal of industrial economics

how valuable is a good reputation a sample selection model of internet auctions on the online auction site ebay by convention sellers do not ship goods to winning bidders until after they have received payment so there is an opportunity for sellers to take advantage of bidders trust realizing this the designers of ebay created a system that relies on self enforcement using reputation several recent studies have found that bidders give little or no reward to sellers who have better reputations i show that in fact sellers are strongly rewarded for the first few reports that they have behaved honestly but marginal returns to additional reports are severely decreasing

publicly funded r d programs and survival of patents i apply a survival model to a detailed data set of swedish patents to estimate how different financing factors affect the likelihood of patent renewal since the owners know more about the patents than potential external financiers there is a problem of asymmetric information to overcome this sweden has for a long time relied on government support rather than private venture capital pvc in the empirical analysis two kinds of government loans are unbundled the empirical results show that patents which have received soft government loans in the r d phase have a higher probability of expiring than patents without such financing but patents that have received more market oriented government loans during the commercialization phase are renewed for as long as other commercialized patents this finding suggests that rather than bad choices of projects it is the nature of the contract terms that explains the low renewal of some patents with government financing

r d co practice and reverse knowledge integration in multinational firms this paper contributes to the developing literature on the management of distributed innovation in multinational firms we focus on a specific organizational mechanism r d co practice which we believe is an important facilitator of knowledge integration in multinationals with global innovation strategies in our formulation r d co practice joint technical activities between units increases levels of absorptive capacity and social capital among participating units thus increasing the likelihood that they will share knowledge at future time periods we find strong support for this hypothesis through an empirical analysis of reverse subsidiary to headquarters knowledge integration in two sectors automotive and pharmaceuticals over a 21 year period

economic insights from internet auctions this paper surveys recent studies of internet auctions four main areas of research are summarized first we survey several studies that document and attempt to explain the frequently observed sniping or last second bidding behavior in these auctions second we summarize several methods proposed to quantify the distortions caused by asymmetric information in these markets most notably due to the winner s curse third we explore research about the role of reputation mechanisms installed to help combat these distortions finally we discuss what internet auctions have to teach us about auction design

credit derivatives in banking useful tools for managing risk abstract we model the effects on banks of the introduction of a market for credit derivatives in particular credit default swaps a bank can use such swaps to temporarily transfer credit risks of their loans to others reducing the likelihood that defaulting loans trigger the bank s financial distress because credit derivatives are more flexible at transferring risks than are other more established tools such as loan sales without recourse these instruments make it easier for banks to circumvent the lemons problem caused by banks superior information about the credit quality of their loans however we find that the introduction of a credit derivatives market is not necessarily desirable because it can cause other markets for loan risk sharing to break down

the welfare analysis of product innovations with an application to computed tomography scanners the main goal of this paper is to put forward a methodology for the measurement of product innovations using a value metric that is equating the magnitude of innovations with the welfare gains they generate this research design is applied to the case of computed tomography scanners a revolutionary innovation in medical technology the econometric procedure centers on the estimation of a discrete choice model the nested multinominal logit which yields the parameters of a utility function defined over the changing quality dimensions of the innovative product the estimated flow of social gains from innovation is used to compute a social rate of return to r d to explore the interrelation between innovation and diffusion and to trace the time profile of benefits and costs the latter suggesting the possible occurrence of technological cycles

has the cds market lowered the cost of corporate debt abstract many have claimed that credit default swaps cdss have lowered the cost of debt financing to firms by creating new hedging opportunities and information for investors this paper evaluates the impact that the onset of cds trading has on the spreads that underlying firms pay to raise funding in the corporate bond and syndicated loan markets employing a range of methodologies we fail to find evidence that the onset of cds trading lowers the cost of debt financing for the average borrower further we uncover economically significant adverse effects on risky and informationally opaque firms

measuring innovative performance is there an advantage in using multiple indicators abstract the innovative performance of companies has been studied quite extensively and for a long period of time however the results of many studies have not yet led to a generally accepted indicator of innovative performance or a common set of indicators so far the variety in terms of constructs measurements samples industries and countries has been substantial this paper studies the innovative performance of a large international sample of nearly 1200 companies in four high tech industries using a variety of indicators these indicators range from r d inputs patent counts and patent citations to new product announcements the study establishes that a composite construct based on these four indicators clearly catches a latent variable innovative performance however our findings also suggest that the statistical overlap between these indicators is that strong that future research might also consider using any of these indicators to measure the innovative performance of companies in high tech industries

risky recombinations institutional gatekeeping in the innovation process theories of innovation and technical change posit that inventions that combine knowledge across technology domains have greater impact than inventions drawn from a single domain the evidence for this claim comes mostly from research on patented inventions and ignores failed patent applications we draw on insights from research into institutional gatekeeping to theorize that to be granted patent applications that span technological domains must have higher quality than otherwise comparable narrower applications using data on failed and successful patent applications we estimate an integrated two stage model that accounts for this differential selection we find that more domain spanning patent applications are less likely to be approved and that controlling for this differential selection reduces the estimated effect of knowledge recombination on innovative impact by about one third by conceptualizing the patent approval process as a form of institutional gatekeeping this paper highlights the in

securitization and bank performance theory suggests that securitization provides financial institutions with an opportunity to lower the cost of funding improve credit risk management and increase profitability in practice however it might lead to adverse consequences through a number of indirect channels therefore the net impact of securitization on bank performance is ambiguous this study aims to evaluate whether banks improve their performance through the use of the securitization market by applying a propensity score matching approach in other words we build a counterfactual group of banks to assess what would have happened to the securitizing banks had they not securitized using us commercial banking data from 2001 to 2008 we first test these hypotheses using univariate analysis and find that securitizing banks are on average more profitable institutions with higher credit risk exposure and higher cost of funding however the propensity score matching analysis does not provide evidence of significant causal effects of securitization on the performance of banks therefore securitization does not seem to outperform alternative funding risk management and profitability improvement techniques used by banks that have ex ante similar characteristics to those securitizing our evidence raises important questions about the motives for banks increasing securitization activities and consequent implications for the banking system

what determines patent value insights from the semiconductor industry abstract this paper contributes to an understanding which impacts certain patent characteristics have on the value of patent rights in an exploratory study 127 individual patents from a semiconductor company were evaluated comprehensively by technical and marketing representatives the analysis of this rare data shows that for patents used as bargaining chips novelty and inventive activity are most important difficulty of inventing around and disclosure turn out to be of limited importance due to a selection bias the influence of patent age on its value cannot be determined the results hint at a differentiated theoretical plausibility of value indicators

the value of control in emerging markets when a developed country multinational firm acquires majority control of a firm in an emerging market there is an economically large and statistically significant increase in the acquiring firm s stock price in 1986 2006 developed market acquirers experienced positive and significant abnormal returns of 1 16 on average over a three day event window positive acquirer returns and dollar value gains appear unique to emerging market mergers and acquisitions and are not replicated when the same developed market acquirers take over firms in developed markets the size of the stock price increase is more pronounced a the weaker the contracting environment in the emerging market and b for industries with high asset intangibility the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

corporate entrepreneurship strategy extending the integrative framework through the lens of complexity science whereas our understanding of corporate entrepreneurship ce and corporate entrepreneurship strategy ces continues to expand there has been little theoretical development to support the most extensive framework to date the integrative model of ces as proposed by ireland et al entrep theory pract 33 1 19 46 2009 according to the model ces is built upon the three foundational elements of an entrepreneurial strategic vision a pro entrepreneurship organizational architecture and entrepreneurial processes and behaviors as exhibited throughout the organization ireland et al 2009 p 38 the purpose of this study is to present a broad overarching theory complexity science to examine the key elements and propositions of the ces model complexity science founded on assumptions of interdependent heterogeneous agents and nonlinear interactions as well as non deterministic and potentially extreme outcomes offers established multi level concepts theoretical boundary conditions and methodological guidance for scholars to build and test future studies on ce and ces though our complexity perspective draws extensively from conceptual work on complex adaptive systems and agent based models we ground our arguments on the empirical ubiquity of power law distributions in all constructs and levels of analysis within the ces model we conclude with a detailed research agenda as well as a prescriptive discussion related to theory development quantitative analysis and practical applications to guide future studies on ce

innovation through exaptation and its determinants the role of technological complexity analogy making patent scope the concept of exaptation has been recently introduced in innovation studies previous empirical studies have only focused on the organization level conditions of exaptation this paper fills the gaps by focusing on invention and inventor level conditions such as technological complexity inventors analogical ability and patent scope to test our hypotheses we analyse a large sample of u s patents obtained from the uspto and nber databases based on our findings we discuss a number of implications of exaptation for the management of innovation as well as for policy makers

innovating in the periphery the impact of local and foreign inventor mobility on the value of indian patents abstract we examine the impact of local and foreign labor mobility in india by modeling one regional and one global network each of which captures the inter organizational mobility of inventors our analysis of the regional network shows that within india the productivity of inventors does not improve when they move from foreign to indian organizations in the global network we find that indian organizations remain located in the periphery as a result of employing a small number of inventors from foreign organizations however in the instances when inventors are hired from foreign organizations they are able to produce patents with a higher impact in comparison to inventors hired from other indian organizations furthermore when the inventors are hired from abroad the impact of their patents is even higher in comparison the implications of these findings for innovation and policy in the emerging economy context are discussed

synthetic or real the equilibrium effects of credit default swaps on bond markets we provide a model of nonredundant credit default swaps cdss building on the observation that cdss have lower trading costs than bonds cds introduction involves a trade off it crowds out existing demand for the bond but improves the bond allocation by allowing long term investors to become levered basis traders and absorb more of the bond supply we characterize conditions under which cds introduction raises bond prices the model predicts a negative cds bond basis as well as turnover and price impact patterns that are consistent with empirical evidence we also show that a ban on naked cdss can raise borrowing costs

risk and hedging do credit derivatives increase bank risk abstract the objective of this paper is to investigate whether financial innovation of credit derivatives makes banks more exposed to credit risk although credit derivatives are important for hedging and securitizing credit risk and thereby likely to enhance the sharing of such risk some commentators have raised concerns that they may destabilize the banking sector this paper investigates this issue in a simple model driven by costs of financial distress the analysis identifies two effects of credit derivatives innovation they enhance risk sharing as suggested by the hedging argument but they also make further acquisition of risk more attractive the latter effect if dominant can therefore destabilize the banking sector the critical factor is perhaps surprisingly the competitive nature of the existing underlying credit markets as these markets become more elastic the threat of destabilization increases the paper discusses issues related to bank regulation within the context of the model

a knowledge based theory of the firm the problem solving perspective in this paper we develop a knowledge based theory of the firm while existing knowledge based theory focuses on the efficiency of hierarchy in economizing on knowledge exchange we develop a theory of the firm that focuses on the efficiency of alternative organizational forms ingenerating knowledge or capability our theory begins with the problem as the basic unit of analysis arguing that a problem s complexity influences the optimal method of solution search and the optimal means of organizing that search the distinguishing feature that differentiates among organizational alternatives is the different way each resolves conflict over the selection of solution trials that is the way it chooses the path of search our theory predicts that efficiency demands that these governance alternatives be matched in a discriminating way to problems based on their associated benefits and costs in governing solution search thus our theory is among the first to simultaneously treat both the boundary choice i e internal versus external and the choice among alternative internal approaches to organizing

a dynamic analysis of university agricultural biotechnology patent production this article examines the factors that account for agricultural biotechnology patenting success among universities using a dynamic count data model it builds a theoretical and econometric model to capture the inherently dynamic and nonlinear process of technological innovation wherein a feedback mechanism from previous success partially determines current patent counts the econometric estimates reveal the importance to agricultural biotechnology patent production of land grant infrastructure quality faculty patent oriented technology transfer offices as well as dynamic feedback effects the advent of exclusive property rights for university research specifically the bayh dole act has created the potential for major changes in the missions of u s universities especially among land grant universities lgus as well as in the overall system of technology creation and distribution in agriculture at the same time new genetic and cloning technologies along with the recently created ability to patent plants and living organisms are profoundly changing the range of agricultural technologies that are likely to be available in the united states and internationally indeed as zilberman yarkin and heiman argue these new agricultural biotechnologies ag biotech and their associated intellectual property rights appear to be creating a new paradigm a veritable revolution in the organization and interaction of university research and the agricultural sector under this new paradigm universities emphasize patenting innovations and then granting at times

an extreme value model of concept testing we model concept testing in new product development as a search for the most profitable solution to a design problem when allocating resources developers must balance the cost of testing multiple designs against the potential profits that may result we propose extreme value theory as a mathematical abstraction of the concept testing process we investigate the trade off between the benefits and costs of parallel concept testing and derive closed form solutions for the case of profits that follow extreme value distributions we analyze the roles of the scale and tail shape parameters of the profit distribution as well as the cost of testing in determining the optimal number of tests and total budget for the concept phase of npd using an example we illustrate how to estimate and interpret the scale and tail shape parameters we find that the impact of declining concept testing costs on expected profits the number of concepts tested and total spending depend on the scale cost ratio and tail shape parameter of the profit distribution

banks and loan sales marketing nonmarketable assets theories of financial intermediation predict that bank loans should not be marketable because of moral hazard problems banks will not conduct credit risk analysis or monitor borrowers if they are not at risk for failing to perform these services throughout most of history bank loans have not in fact been marketable yet by the end of the 1980 s the amount of commercial and industrial loan sales outstanding had grown to over 250 billion from trivial amounts at the beginning of the decade to explain the opening of this loan sales market we present a model of incentive compatible loan sales that allows for implicit contractual features between loan sellers and loan buyers we then test for the presence of these features using a sample of over 800 recent loan sales

characteristics of patent litigation a window on competition we examine the patenting behavior of firms in an industry characterized by rapid technological change and cumulative innovation recent survey evidence suggests that semiconductor firms do not rely heavily on patents to appropriate returns to r d yet the propensity of semiconductor firms to patent has risen dramatically since the mid 1980s we explore this apparent paradox by conducting interviews with industry representatives and analyzing the patenting behavior of 95 u s semiconductor firms during 1979 1995 the results suggest that the 1980s strengthening of u s patent rights spawned patent portfolio races among capital intensive firms but it also facilitated entry by specialized design firms copyright 2001 by the rand corporation

patents learning by doing and market structure in the chemical processing industries for a sample of 24 chemical products count data models are used to evaluate firms propensity to patent and the link between patented process innovations and output prices the results show that process patenting was largely an outgrowth of learning by doing propensity to patent increased with firm size but decreased with market concentration reductions in output prices were strongly linked to learning by doing and more weakly to the rate of patenting producer firms appear to have been more successful than non producers in appropriating the value of patented process innovations

determinants of cross national knowledge transfer and its effect on firm innovation this study examines the determinants of international knowledge flow from a resource based perspective it evaluates the impact of cross national knowledge transfer on firm innovative performance based on 56 027 us patents owned by 53 selected firms in the us based pharmaceutical industry the results suggest that innovative performance is a curvilinear function of the international knowledge content used by a firm to innovate as hypothesized it was found that at 1 low and moderate levels of international knowledge content a firm s strategy to transfer international knowledge improves its innovative performance and at 2 higher levels of international knowledge content there are diminishing marginal returns to transferring knowledge from overseas

disentangling patterns of economic technological and innovative specialization of western economies an assessment of the varieties of capitalism theory on comparative institutional advantages it is one of the central arguments of the varieties of capitalism voc literature that national institutions determine comparative advantage while liberal market economies lmes are said to offer comparative institutional advantages to firms that specialize in high tech sectors based on radical innovation coordinated market economies cmes offer advantages to firms specializing in medium high tech sectors characterized by incremental innovation several studies have tested these claims and arrived at contradictory results about specialization in line with institutional advantages we argue that undifferentiated conceptualizations of the notion of specialization contribute to these inconclusive results based on the insights of the innovation literature on comparative advantage we therefore disentangle the concepts of 1 economic specialization 2 technological specialization and 3 innovative specialization our analyses of panel data on exports and patents show that the voc theory is rather weak in explaining patterns of economic specialization but can account for technological specialization furthermore the voc literature can hardly explain patterns of innovative specialization

the rejuvenation of inventors through corporate spinouts this article focuses on corporate spinouts as a strategy that can rejuvenate the inventive efforts of inventors with a long tenure in the same company we rely on an unbalanced panel of 5 604 inventor year observations to study a matched sample of 431 inventors employed by the xerox corporation and find evidence in support of three predictions first inventors who join a spinout increase the extent of exploration in their inventive activities second they decrease the extent to which they rely on the parent organization s knowledge third because long tenured employees through socialization tend to progressively adopt more exploitative behavior than short tenured members they benefit relatively more from the spinout experience these results are robust to several econometric specifications that try to account for the endogeneity of the inventors decision to join the spinout for the fact that spinouts inventive activity may be intrinsically different from that of the parent company and for the possible presence of novel external stimuli for those who join spinouts the data provide large sample evidence consistent with the idea that socialization reduces opportunities for organizational learning we discuss the implications for theory and practice

the dynamics of the transfer and renewal of patents this article explores new data on the transfer and renewal of u s patents and interprets this new evidence using a model of patent transfers and renewal we find that the proportion of transferred patents is large and differs across technology fields and especially type of patentees we also find that the probability of a patent being traded depends on a number of factors the age of the patent the number of citations received by a given age the patent generality and whether the patent has been previously traded or not these findings are consistent with the predictions of a model of patent transfers and renewals

structural modeling of the value of patent abstract there is a considerable volume of prior research on the relationship between innovation and patents those research studies reveal that patents contain a great deal of noise and unless a correction is made in terms of the value of individual patents a simple count of the number of patents does not constitute a very useful indicator from research that has been conducted for the purpose of finding such an indicator to show the value of individual patents that is research to identify the characteristics of valuable patents many kinds of value indicators have been proposed nevertheless research hitherto has focused primarily on business or private value derived from the possession of patents and little attention has been paid to value in terms of technical knowledge or social value in a survey of inventors conducted by rieti in 2007 terminology describing broad concepts was used when questioning inventors about the value of individual patents and this has provided an excellent opportunity to analyze the multiple factors lying behind the value of patents and how they impact one another the purpose of this research is to use data from the rieti survey of inventors and structural equation modeling methods to elucidate the relationships between the technological and business value of patents and the latent factors that influence them the findings show that a scientific technological motive for inventors would have a positive effect on both the business and technological value meanwhile the monetary or promotion motive would not have any direct effects on the value of a patent the model also suggests that academic linkage would have a strong positive effect on the technological value but a weak negative effect on the business value furthermore these relationships differ more markedly according to technological field

co ownership of intellectual property exploring the value appropriation and value creation implications of co patenting with different partners combining both interview data and empirical analyses at the patent and firm levels we explore the value appropriation and value creation implications of r d collaboration resulting in the co ownership of intellectual property i e co patents we make an explicit distinction between three different types of co patenting partners intra industry partners inter industry partners and universities our findings indicate that the value appropriation challenges of ip sharing are clearly evident with intra industry co patenting where partners are more likely to encounter overlapping exploitation domains co patenting with universities is associated with higher market value since appropriation challenges are unlikely to play a role and collaboration may signal novel technological opportunities although we find some evidence that co patenting corresponds to higher patent value patents co owned with firms are significantly less likely to receive self citations indicating constraints on the future exploitation and development of co owned technologies

related variety unrelated variety and technological breakthroughs an analysis of us state level patenting castaldi c frenken k and los b related variety unrelated variety and technological breakthroughs an analysis of us state level patenting regional studies this paper investigates how variety affects the innovation output of a region borrowing arguments from theories of recombinant innovation it is expected that related variety will enhance innovation as related technologies are more easily recombined into a new technology however it is also expected that unrelated variety enhances technological breakthroughs since radical innovation often stems from connecting previously unrelated technologies opening up whole new functionalities and applications using patent data for us states in the period 1977 99 and associated citation data evidence is found for both hypotheses this study thus sheds a new and critical light on the related variety hypothesis in economic geography

winners and losers from financial derivatives use evidence from community banks this article provides empirical evidence on how profitability of small community banks was affected by derivatives use before and after the 2008 crisis we use an endogenous switching regressions m

loan sales as a response to market based capital constraints models of bank loan sales often appeal to regulatory constraints to motivate this off balance sheet activity here we present a market based model of bank asset sales in which information asymmetries create the incentive for unregulated banks to originate and sell loans to other banks rather than fund them with deposit liabilities banks have a comparative advantage in locating and screening projects within their locality however because of private information banks can fund projects in their portfolio only to the extent that their capital can adequately buffer potential losses on these investments a loan sales market allows a banker having adequate capital to acquire profitable projects originated by a banker whose own capital is insufficient to support the additional risk

pennies from ebay the determinants of price in online auctions this paper presents an exploratory analysis of the determinants of prices in online auctions for collectible united states one cent coins at the ebay web site starting with an initial data set of 20 000 auctions we perform regression analysis on a restricted sample of 461 coins for which we obtained estimates of book value we have three major findings first a seller s feedback ratings reported by other ebay users have a measurable effect on her auction prices negative feedback ratings have a much greater effect than positive feedback ratings do second minimum bids and reserve prices have positive effects on the final auction price in particular minimum bids appear only to have a significant effect when they are binding on a single bidder as predicted by theory third when a seller chooses to have her auction last for a longer period of days this significantly increases the auction price on average

the persistence and dynamics of new venture growth extensive research has suggested that new ventures growth rates lack persistence however existing studies tend not to differentiate between positive and negative growth rates or examine their respective persistence and dynamics building on performance feedback theory we show that positive and negative growth rates exhibit different dynamics over time especially negative growth rates are less likely to persist and more likely to reverse than positive ones furthermore firm size and team size influence the persistence or the lack of thereof of both positive and negative growth rates specifically new ventures that are smaller as well as those managed by larger teams are more likely to maintain positive growth and reverse negative growth relative to their respective counterparts overall this study suggests that positive and negative growth rates differ in their persistence and that new ventures can shape the dynamics of both positive and negative growth

the behavior of inexperienced bidders in internet auctions i introduction as has now been documented in many studies the internet auction market has quickly become a thriving marketplace in the united states the market is dominated by ebay in the second quarter of 2007 alone ebay users posted a total of 559 million listings resulting in gross merchandise value the total amount that all goods sold for of 14 46 billion 1 this impressive success has occurred despite the fact that bidders face substantial risks because of the nature of the market sellers by convention do not send goods to winning bidders until after they have received payment the seller can then simply pocket the money or send an item of poor quality a widespread and widely publicized example of this behavior occurred in 2002 when a seller with a history of over 6 000 properly conducted transactions sold hundreds of porcelain collectibles on 4 january 2002 but did not send the winners anything after receiving payments of about 300 000 2 a consumer who is defrauded by a seller has little recourse because the identity of a seller is known only through an e mail address which can be anonymously obtained 3 to solve this problem rather than formally enforcing contracts ebay has established an innovative reputation system which allows winning bidders to post ratings of sellers actions that are publicly viewable and vice versa the ratings are classified as positive neutral or negative this information is also presented as a feedback rating that is equal to the number of positive reports received from unique trading partners minus the number of negative reports received from unique trading partners 4 potential bidders can use this information to form expectations about how the seller will behave in the future and reward sellers who develop good reputations by bidding more and more often in their auctions the seller s benefits to a good reputation can come in two forms an auction can be more likely to attract bidders and thus result in a sale and bidders can be willing to bid larger amounts most studies do find that auctions are more likely to end in a sale if the seller is more reputable however the results regarding the amount by which bids increase as the seller s reputation improves have been quite mixed some find that bid amounts increase substantially as the seller s reputation improves some find extremely small increases in bid amounts and some find no increase in bid amounts at all 5 the prevalence of studies that show very small changes in bidder behavior as the seller s reputation improves has led to an apparent consensus that the returns to reputation in internet auctions are indeed quite small for example in the september 2007 issue of the journal of economic literature macleod 2007 refers to bajari and hortacsu s survey and notes that the results are rather consistent mikhail i melnik and james alto 2002 paul resnick and richard zeckhauser 2002 and luis cabral and hortacsu 2004 all find that there is a positive relationship between price and quality of the seller s reputation however the overall effect appears to be small despite this consensus recent studies favor the hypothesis that there is a significant increase in bid amounts as the seller s reputation improves melnik and aim 2005 find that the returns to an improved seller reputation increase when there is more uncertainty about product quality livingston 2005 shows that sellers are strongly rewarded for the first few reports that they have behaved honestly but marginal returns to additional reports are severely decreasing he notes that other studies may have found small increases in bid amounts because they typically assume that the relationship between the price and the number of positive reports received by the seller is linear or log linear if marginal returns to reputation are severely decreasing these functional forms may only pick up the small returns that occur after an initial reputation is established

is co invention expediting technological catch up a study of collaboration between emerging country firms and eu inventors firms from emerging countries are going global and europe is attracting around one third of their direct outward investments growing internationalization constitutes an opportunity for technological catch up in this paper we analyze brazilian indian and chinese cross border inventions with european union eu 27 inventors during the period 1990 2012 our results suggest that these inventions represent an opportunity for emerging country firms to accumulate technological capabilities access frontier knowledge and appropriate the property rights of co inventions this paper contributes to understanding catching up by emerging country firms c 2015 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

a dynamic stochastic analysis of international patent application and renewal processes abstract this paper formulates a dynamic stochastic model to examine the joint patent application and renewal behaviors under an international patent protection regime the framework makes it possible to utilize both the cross sectional multi country application and the time series patent renewal dimensions of available international patenting data to estimate the private value of patent protection and allows us to distinguish more aspects of patent returns the evolution dynamics of the value of european patents in pharmaceutical and electronics industries are examined estimation results indicate that pharmaceutical patents are endowed with higher initial returns thus their owners tend to seek patent protection in more countries than electronics patent holders however pharmaceutical patents become obsolete at a much faster pace than electronics patents and consequently they have lower renewal rates and shorter lives

science and the diffusion of knowledge abstract scientists social scientists and politicians frequently credit basic science with stimulating technological innovation and with it economic growth despite a substantial body of research investigating this general relationship relatively little empirical attention has been given to understanding the mechanisms that might generate this linkage this paper considers whether more rapid diffusion of knowledge brought about by the norm of publication might account for part of this effect we identify the importance of publication by comparing the patterns of citations from future patents to three groups of focal patents i those that reference scientific peer reviewed publications ii those that reference commercial non scientific publications and iii those that reference neither our analyses strongly implicate publication as an important mechanism for accelerating the rate of technological innovation patents that reference published material whether peer reviewed or not receive more citations primarily because their influence diffuses faster in time and space

credit risk transfer in u s commercial banks what changed during the 2007 2009 crisis abstract following the debate on the role of credit risk transfer crt in exacerbating the 2007 2009 crisis this paper investigates the usage and effects of loan sales securitization and credit derivatives in u s commercial banks over the last decade with special emphasis on the financial crisis we find that in times of severe funding constraints the need to raise financial resources becomes the principal incentive behind crt we document some beneficial effects of crt on the economy since the funds released through crt are subsequently invested by banks to sustain credit supply also in recession however we report higher overall riskiness in banks that engage intensively in loans sales and securitization which translates into higher default rates during the crisis interestingly the benefits and drawbacks of crt are much stronger for loan sales and securitization than for credit derivatives

derivative ideas and the value of intangible assets we build a general equilibrium model where growth is driven by two invention types fundamental ideas that cause creative destruction and derivative ideas that enhance the value of existing inventions the model provides a new mapping from microeconomic patent data to aggregate total factor productivity growth and the aggregate value of privately owned knowledge we show how to measure the frequency of derivative ideas and the rate of creative destruction we estimate that derivative ideas account for 70 80 of all patents and their presence more than doubles the value of knowledge capital relative to what the measured innovation rate might otherwise imply

securitization risk transferring and financial instability the case of spain abstract the 2007 2010 financial crisis has hit a variety of countries asymmetrically the case of spain is particularly illustrative as it exemplifies in a vivid manner most of the core issues largely responsible for the crisis this country experienced a pronounced housing bubble partly funded via spectacular developments in its securitization markets leading to looser credit standards and subsequent financial stability problems we analyze the sequential deterioration of credit in spain considering rating changes in securitized deals using a sample of 20 286 observations on securities and rating changes from 2000q1 to 2010q1 we build a model in which loan growth on balance sheet credit quality and rating changes are estimated simultaneously our results suggest that loan growth significantly affects on balance sheet loan performance with a lag of at least two years additionally loan performance is found to explain rating changes with a lag of four quarters importantly bank characteristics in particular observed solvency cash flow generation and cost efficiency also affect ratings considerably additionally these other bank characteristics seem to a higher weight in the rating changes of securities issued by savings banks as compared with commercial banks

recruiting for ideas how firms exploit the prior inventions of new hires when firms recruit inventors they acquire not only the use of their skills but also enhanced access to their stock of ideas but do hiring firms actually increase their use of new recruits prior inventions our estimates suggest they do quite significantly in fact by approximately 219 on average however this does not necessarily reflect widespread learning by hiring in fact we estimate that a recruit s exploitation of her own prior ideas accounts for almost half of the above effect with much of the diffusion to others being limited to the recruit s immediate collaborative network furthermore although one might expect the recruit s role to diminish rapidly as her tacit knowledge diffuses across her new firm our estimates indicate that her importance is surprisingly persistent over time we base these findings on an empirical strategy that exploits the variation over time in hiring firms citations to the recruits premove patents specifically we employ a difference in differences approach to compare premove versus postmove citation rates for the recruits prior patents and corresponding matched pair control patents our methodology has three benefits compared to previous studies that also examine the link between labor mobility and knowledge flow 1 it does not suffer from the upward bias inherent in the conventional cross sectional comparison 2 it generates results that are robust to a more stringently matched control sample and 3 it enables a temporal examination of knowledge flow patterns this paper was accepted by kamalini ramdas entrepreneurship and innovation

indicators for national science and technology policy how robust are composite indicators abstract this article addresses a set of issues that were central to keith pavitt s research that is the construction and use of tools to measure national innovative performance and to design national policies relating to innovation it presents an overview of the development of science and technology s t indicators and their use in national policy making and provides evidence of the vulnerability of composite s t indicators to manipulation a brief history of the development of s t indicators begins with the role of the united states followed by their worldwide diffusion with particular emphasis on europe newer developments towards composite indicators benchmarking and scoreboarding are discussed to investigate the robustness of innovation scoreboards empirically a sensitivity analysis of one selected case is presented it is shown that composite scores and country rank positions can vary considerably depending on the selection process thus the use of scoreboards leaves room for manipulation in the policymaking system further research is needed on alternative methods of calculation to prevent their misuse and abuse

a penny for your quotes patent citations and the value of innovations the use ofpatents in economic research has been seriously hindered by the fact that patents vary enormously in their importance or value and hence simple patent counts cannot be informative about innovative output the purpose of this article is to put forward patent counts weighted by citations as indicators of the value of innovations thereby overcoming the limitations of simple counts the empirical analysis of a particular innovation computed tomography scanners indeed shows a close association between citation based patent indices and independent measures of the social value of innovations in that field moreover the weighting scheme appears to be nonlinear increasing in the number of citations implying that the informational content of citations rises at the margin as in previous studies simple patent counts are found to be highly correlated with contemporaneous rd however here the association is within afield over time rather than cross sectional

in search of complementary assets the determinants of alliance formation of high tech start ups abstract why do new technology based firms ntbfs cooperate starting from teece s teece d j 1986 profiting from technological innovation implications for integration collaboration licensing and public policy research policy 15 285 305 conceptual framework and taking advantage of subsequent literature on alliance formation in the resource and competence based tradition and in the social structure perspective we derive an empirical model that aims at highlighting the inducements and obstacles that these firms face in alliance formation according to firm specific characteristics and the nature of the alliance in particular a distinction is made between exploitative commercial alliances and explorative technological alliances the econometric estimates based on a large sample of italian young high tech firms that are observed from 1994 to 2003 provide strong evidence supporting two key intuitions of teece s work first the combination of specialized complementary assets appears to be a key driver of the formation of exploitative commercial alliances by ntbfs more specifically patent holding affects positively the likelihood to establish commercial alliances but this propensity is found to rapidly decrease with firm size suggesting that as long as ntbfs become larger and possess specialized commercial assets their urge for commercial alliances diminishes second following the parallelism set forth by teece between search for alliance partners and access to external financing the analysis indicates that potentially beneficial alliances may not take place because of the high transaction costs faced by smaller ntbfs in this respect our results clearly support the view that sponsor institutions as public research organizations venture and corporate venture capitalists may sensibly reduce these costs and that their role crucially depends on both the identity of the sponsor and the type of alliance

the greener the better job creation effects of environmentally friendly technological change this article investigates the link between environment related innovation and job creation at firm level employing italian data on 4507 manufacturing firms matched with patent records for the period 2001 2008 we test whether green innovation measured by the number of environment related patents has a positive effect on long run employment growth that is specific with respect to non environmental innovation results show a strong positive impact of green innovation on long run job creation substantially bigger than the effect of other innovations our findings are robust to a number of additional tests including controls for patents quality and cost differential between generic and green innovation and endogeneity

patents as options some estimates of the value of holding european patent stocks in many countries holders of patents must pay an annual renewal fee in order to keep their patents in force this paper uses data on the proportion of patents renewed and the renewal fees faced by post world war ii cohorts of patents in france the united kingdom and germany in conjunction with a model of patent holders renewal decisions to estimate the returns earned from holding patents in these countries since patents are often applied for at a nearly stage in the innovation process the model allows agents to be uncertain about the sequence of returns that will be earned if the patent is kept inforce formally then the paper presents and solves a discrete choice optimal stochastic control model derives the implications of the model on aggregate behaviour and then estimates the parameters of the model from aggregate data the estimates enable a detailed description of the evolution of the distribution of returns earned from holding patents over their life spans and calculations of both the annual returns earned from holding the patents still in force or the patent stocks in the alternative countries and the distribution of the discounted value of returns earned from holding the patents in a cohort this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

credit default swaps and the empty creditor problem the empty creditor problem arises when a debtholder has obtained insurance against default but otherwise retains control rights in and outside bankruptcy we analyze this problem from an ex ante and ex post perspective in a formal model of debt with limited commitment by comparing contracting outcomes with and without insurance through credit default swaps cds we show that cds and the empty creditors they give rise to have important ex ante commitment benefits by strengthening creditors bargaining power they raise the debtor s pledgeable income and help reduce the incidence of strategic default however we also show that lenders will over insure in equilibrium giving rise to an inefficiently high incidence of costly bankruptcy we discuss a number of remedies that have been proposed to overcome the inefficiency resulting from excess insurance jel g30 g32 g33 one of the most significant changes in the debtor creditor relationship in the

short term safety or long term failure empirical evidence of the impact of securitization on bank risk based on a sample of u s commercial banks from 2002 to 2012 this paper shows that bank loan securitization has a significant and positive impact on both z scores and the likelihood of bank failure indicating a short term risk reduction and a long term risk increase effect we also find disparate impacts between mortgage and non mortgage securitization loan sale activities are found to have a similar impact to securitization

the technological origins of radical inventions this paper aims to trace down the origins of radical inventions in spite of many theoretical discussions on the effect of radical inventions the specific nature of radical inventions has received much less attention in the theoretical and empirical literature we try to fill that void by an empirical investigation into the specific origins of radical inventions we explore this issue by a close examination of 157 individual patents which are selected from a pool of more than 300 000 patents in contrast to the conventional wisdom that radical inventions are based less on existing knowledge we find that they are to a higher degree based on existing knowledge than non radical inventions a further result that follows from our analysis is that radical inventions are induced by the recombination over more knowledge domains the combination of knowledge from domains that might usually not be connected seems to deliver more radical inventions

the value of u s patents by owner and patent characteristics abstract this paper uses renewal data to estimate the value of u s patents controlling for patent and owner characteristics estimates of u s patent value are substantially larger than estimates for european patents however the ratio of u s patent value to r d for firms is only about 3 contrary to a common assertion patents issued to small patentees are much less valuable than those issued to large corporations litigated patents are more valuable as are highly cited patents however patent citations explain little variance in value suggesting limits to their use as a measure of patent quality

reputation in an internet auction market i introduction without transmission of credible information asymmetries may lead to underproduction of goods or even market failure reputation mitigates inefficiencies associated with information asymmetries by providing an informative signal of quality 1 the difficulty in quantifying reputation means that few studies can analyze empirically the role of reputation in markets our analysis of a quantified market observed measure of reputation provides direct evidence of the effect of a seller s reputation on the terms of a onetime real world transaction thereby contributing empirical support to a fundamental economic principle this study empirically examines person to person transactions within the internet market known as ebay in this virtual market of unseen participants and products buyers and sellers face the risks of repudiation as the counter party may deny the agreement after the fact buyers assume risks associated with lack of seller integrity and asymmetric information about the particular product as the buyer is typically required to send payment before the seller ships the product in addition for many ebay transactions the cost of enforcing a contract is high relative to the transaction s value resulting in a practical absence of legal enforcement 2 by providing a history of trade execution information ebay benefits market participants by reducing information asymmetries while achieving substantial transaction cost economies market participants relate personal experiences which ebay uses to calculate a numerical reputation measure for each user market participants in turn can use this reputation measure to assess counter party risk and adjust bidding behavior accordingly in a sample of 460 auctions held between january 1998 and july 1998 we find a positive relation between prices and ebay s reputation measure higher reputation sellers experience higher auction prices ceteris paribus our findings suggest that repeat players are rewarded for building reputation consistent with the belief that the high reputation seller s value of future transactions outweighs the value of taking advantage of the buyer in the current transaction buyers are willing to pay more to a higher reputation seller this article contributes to the literature not only by providing quantitative support of long accepted reputation theories but also by illustrating the use of nontraditional markets as a natural laboratory for experiments this article is an example of how a newly formed electronic market can provide the elements necessary for analytical research we find that ebay transactions for this item exhibit characteristics similar to transactions in more conventional markets namely 1 prices are higher when there is less quantity supplied when fewer of the items are available the same day 2 prices are lower during periods of lower demand times less likely to have high traffic 3 sellers with higher shipping and handling costs receive lower prices and 4 sellers failing to provide information about shipping and handling fees i e larger information asymmetries receive fewer bids dramatic innovations in online market structure and increasing availability of online market data should enable researchers to examine directly other traditionally non quantifiable economic ideas this article is organized as follows section ii describes how reputation can be used to facilitate transactions in the presence of asymmetric information section iii describes the ebay market summarizes the listing and bidding processes and discusses the reputation mechanism for this market section iv presents the price and reputation descriptive statistics associated with a consistently auctioned item and reports the empirical findings of how this item s highest bid price varies with the level of the seller s reputation we conclude in section v with a discussion of ebay s continued attempts to add value to the market through recent structural changes

the benefits of lending relationships evidence from small business data this paper empirically examines how ties between a firm and its creditors affect the availability and cost of funds to the firm we analyze data collected in a survey of small firms by the small business administration the primary benefit of building close ties with an institutional creditor is that the availability of financing increases we find smaller effects on the price of credit attempts to widen the circle of relationships by borrowing from multiple lenders increases the price and reduces the availability of credit in sum relationships are valuable and appear to operate more through quantities rather than prices

the sound of silence in online feedback estimating trading risks in the presence of reporting bias most online feedback mechanisms rely on voluntary reporting of privately observed outcomes this introduces the potential for reporting bias a situation where traders exhibit different propensities to report different outcome types to the system unless properly accounted for reporting bias may severely distort the distribution of public feedback relative to the underlying distribution of private transaction outcomes and thus hamper the reliability of feedback mechanisms this study offers a method that allows users of feedback mechanisms where both partners of a bilateral exchange are allowed to report their satisfaction to see through the distortions introduced by reporting bias and derive unbiased estimates of the underlying distribution of privately observed outcomes a key aspect of our method lies in extracting information from the number of transactions where one or both trading partners choose to remain silent we apply our method to a large data set of ebay feedback our results support the widespread belief that ebay traders are more likely to post feedback when satisfied than when dissatisfied and are consistent with the presence of positive and negative reciprocation among ebay traders most importantly our analysis derives unbiased estimates of the risks that are associated with trading on ebay that we believe are more realistic than those suggested by a naive interpretation of the unusually high 99 levels of positive feedback currently found on that system

credit risk transfer and contagion some have argued that recent increases in credit risk transfer are desirable because they improve the diversification of risk others have suggested that they may be undesirable if they increase the risk of financial crises using a model with banking and insurance sectors we show that credit risk transfer can be beneficial when banks face uniform demand for liquidity however when they face idiosyncratic liquidity risk and hedge this risk in an interbank market credit risk transfer can be detrimental to welfare it can lead to contagion between the two sectors and increase the risk of crises

investment risk cds insurance and firm financing abstract we develop a model in which investment risk drives the demand for cds insurance the model shows the efficiency of cds contracting over the state of the economy it shows that cds overinsurance insurance in excess of renegotiation surpluses is procyclical allowing for greater financing when the probability of default is lower our theory predicts that the incidence of so called empty creditors is largely constrained to firms that are safer face lower bankruptcy costs have more severe management creditor agency problems and whose assets are costlier to verify our analysis generates a number of empirical predictions and provides new insights into the regulation of cds markets

measuring patent s influence on technological evolution a study of knowledge spanning and subsequent inventive activity we introduce technological influence as a variable to measure an invention s direct and indirect impact on the evolution of technology this provides a novel means to study the short and long run effect of invention antecedents on technological evolution invention activity and economic growth a comparison between models of technological influence and direct technological impact is presented model estimations are based on data from semiconductor patents granted over a 5 year period results from quantile regression estimations show significant differences in the relationships between antecedents of technological influence and impact for example pioneering the spanning of knowledge boundaries has a positive relationship with the patent s influence while no relationship is found with direct citations these results have important implications for public policy and the management of technology they suggest the need for deeper understanding of the micro foundations of the technological evolution process and raise the question of whether inventors under current ip protection receive adequate economic incentives to promote actions driving economic growth

can patent family size and composition signal patent value abstractrecent research has proposed a method of patent valuation based on weighting patent family size by the market size of the countries in the family the premise is that inventors tend to seek

wacky patents meet economic indicators we investigate whether standard indicators can distinguish between wacky patents and a control group forward citations are good predictors of importance however wacky patents have higher originality generality and citation lags suggesting that these indicators should be interpreted carefully

using what you know patented knowledge in incumbent firms and employee entrepreneurship prior studies have shown that the acquisition of relevant knowledge by employees in existing firms is associated with the creation of new firms through employee entrepreneurship some researchers propose that the transition to entrepreneurship may be explained by established firms undervaluing knowledge created by employees whereas other scholars maintain that firm strategies may lead to the underutilization of knowledge we ask the question of which of these drivers is more pronounced as an explanation of employee entrepreneurship and what technological factors matter in this relationship analyzing a unique data set we find that the likelihood of employee entrepreneurship increases with the inventor s assessment of the value of a patent for an invention developed while at the incumbent firm but dramatically decreases when the invention protected by the patent is commercialized by the firm licensed to third parties interdependent with other firms inventions protected by patents or technologically broad we also find that conditional on high valuation by the inventor a matching high valuation by the firm further increases the likelihood of transitioning to entrepreneurship in combination we show that a situation when both the inventor and the firm consider the invention valuable but the firm ends up not commercializing the invention is more predictive of employee entrepreneurship than simple differences in assessing the value of the invention the study refines our understanding of the drivers of entrepreneurship by underscoring the strategic explanation of employee entrepreneurship

getting competition down to a science the effects of technological competition on firms scientific publications prior research about the interaction between private firms and the scientific community has largely viewed firms articles in scientific publications as a means to improve research and development productivity by encouraging their researchers to publish scientific papers firms can maintain linkages with the scientific community attract talent and access external knowledge on which they can build to create innovations this paper in contrast emphasizes the role of scientific publications in firms battles for market dominance and examines how competitive conditions shape firms propensities to publish scientific articles about their innovations focusing on the context of pharmaceutical drugs we develop propositions about how the competition that one drug faces from similar drugs and potential substitutes influences the innovating firm s inclination to publish articles in the top medical journals about that drug to facilitate its assessment by the u s food and drug administration and the medical community we also propose that scientific articles about competing drugs compel a firm to highlight its own drug in scientific papers to assert the drug s uniqueness and mitigate the threat of substitution whereas prior research has elucidated how science contributes to enhancing firms competence at creating innovations which is critical to their ability to compete in technology intensive environments this paper draws attention to how competition in turn permeates into the scientific arena creating inducements for firms to use scientific publications to position their innovations in the marketplace