This paper extends the Schumpeterian model of creative destruction by allowing followers' cost of innovation to increase in their technological distance from the leader. This assumption is motivated by the observation the more technologically ad- vanced the leader is, the harder it is for a...

How important is information disclosure through patents for subsequent innovation? To answer this question, we examine the expansion of the USPTO Patent Library system after 1975. Before the Internet, patent libraries gave inventors access to patent documents. We find that after patent library...

This paper analyzes the design of innovation contests when the quality of an innovation depends on the research approach, but the best approach is unknown. Inducing a variety of research approaches generates an option value. We show that suitable contests can induce such variety. The...

We build a model of firm-level innovation, productivity growth and reallocation featuring endogenous entry and exit. A new and central economic force is the selection between highand low-type firms, which differ in terms of their innovative capacity. We estimate the parameters of the model using...

Existing theories and empirical research on how innovation occurs largely assume that innovativeness is an inherent characteristic of the individual and that people with this innate ability select into jobs that require it. In this paper, we investigate whether people who do not self-select into...

How important is information disclosure through patents for subsequent innovation? Although disclosure is regarded as essential to the functioning of the patent system, legal scholars have expressed considerable skepticism about its value in practice. To adjudicate this issue, we examine the...

Empirical studies have uncovered an inverted-U relationship between product-market competition and innovation. This is inconsistent with the original Schumpeterian Model, where greater competition reduces the profitability of innovation. We show that the model can predict the inverted-U if the...