We study whether firms value court enforceability of their workers’ noncompete agreements (NCAs), leveraging a 2020 Washington law that made NCAs unenforceable for workers earning less than a threshold of $100k per year (indexed to inflation), covering approximately 79% of Washing-ton workers....

This article examines whether and to what extent the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) affects technology spillovers between focal firms (i.e., receivers of spillovers) and peers (i.e., senders of spillovers). I find that technology spillovers from peers located in states adopting the UTSA are...

This article examines whether and to what extent the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) affects technology spillovers between focal firms (i.e., receivers of spillovers) and peers (i.e., senders of spillovers). I find that technology spillovers from peers located in states adopting the UTSA are...

Do contracts influence behavior independent of the law governing their enforceability? We explore this question in the context of employment noncompetes, using nationally representative data for 11,500 labor force participants. We show that noncompetes are associated with reductions in employee...

Extant work in strategic management has focused on the role of various legal levers when managing human capital. Companies use such levers to improve employee retention and prevent leakage of knowledge to rivals. Specifically, noncompete agreements (NCAs), contracts that prevent employees from...

Trade secrecy law is a hybrid between intellectual property and unfair competition law. This makes the characterisation of trade secrecy law for the purpises of private international law difficult. This paper argues that neither the EU conflict of law rules for unfair competition law nor those...

We examine the effects of trade secret protection laws on firms’ internal transparency. By internal transparency, we refer to the extent to which information is integrated, distributed, and shared within the firm. We argue that stronger trade secret protection reduces firms’ proprietary...