The "market for innovation" -- the sale and licensing of patents -- is an often discussed source of incentives to invest in R&D. This article presents and estimates a model of the transfer and renewal of patents that, under some assumptions, allows us to quantify the gains resulting from the...

This paper explores the dynamics of the transfer of U.S. patents and the significance of the initial missallocation of patent property rights. Here we find that the initial missallocation of patent property rights is large and differs substantially across patentees and technology fields. We also...

The use of debt to finance risky entrepreneurial-firm projects is rife with informational and contracting problems. Nonetheless, we document widespread lending to startups in three innovation-intensive sectors and in early stages of development. At odds with claims that the secondary patent...

We study how the market for innovation affects enforcement of patent rights. Conventional wisdom associates the gains from trade with comparative advantage in manufacturing or marketing. We show that these gains imply that patent transactions should increase litigation risk. We identify a new...

This paper studies the effect of business partners on the commercialization of nvention based ventures, and it assesses the relative importance of partners' human and social capital on commercialization outcomes. Projects run by partnerships were five times more likely to reach...

Entrepreneurial firms are important sources of patented inventions. Yet little is known about what happens to patents "released" to the market when startups fail. This study provides a first look at the frequency and speed with which patents originating from failed startups are redeployed to new...

"This paper explores the dynamics of the transfer of U.S. patents and the significance of the initial missallocation of patent property rights. Here we find that the initial missallocation of patent property rights is large and differs substantially across patentees and technology fields. We...

Several studies among recent empirical work have suggested that the systematic behavior of lending standards over the business cycle, with laxer standards applied during expansions and tighter standards applied during recessions, may be responsible for driving economic fluctuations. We build a...

This paper investigates under which circumstances negotiating simultaneously over multiple issues or assets helps reduce inefficiencies due to the presence of asymmetric information. We find that a simultaneous negotiation over multiple assets that are substitutes reduces inefficiencies. The...