This paper investigates whether there are differences in patient outcomes across different types of hospitals using patient-level data on re-admission and mortality associated with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Hospitals are grouped according to their ownership status (private, teaching,...

The effects of innovation on firm performance is conventionally analysed using R&D or patent applications as measures for innovation capital and market value as the measure of firm performance. We argue that such studies fall short in three important respects. First, the proxies used for...

There is a common, largely anecdotally based belief that registered intellectual property is a less efficient form of protection for SME inventors compared with inventors from large firms. This paper discusses the reasons why SMEs may be disadvantaged in their use of intellectual property as...

Over the past quarter of a century, trade mark applications have grown by 2.3 per cent per annum faster than real GDP in Australia. This paper explores the factors associated with this growth. We find some evidence that over the past two decades, trademarking has been associated with more...

This paper examines the effects of market power and product differentiation on demand for grocery products in Australia over the period 2002 to 2005. We construct a model of the relationship between demand, market power and brand characteristics and then estimate the model using monthly data on...

We use data from 3000 academic scientists to estimate the effects of other parties' patents on the academics' research. Nearly half of all scientists report that their choice of research projects has been affected by the presence of other parties' patents. We find that transaction costs and the...

Conditional on the decision to enter the market for immature technology, we test for the effects that trust – as proxied by the context in which the negotiating parties met – has on the likelihood that these negotiations are successful. Using a randomised dataset of 860 university-firm and...

The commercialization of inventions is an investment, similar to spending on plant and equipment, and accordingly we would expect it to be affected by macroeconomic conditions. Using data on the commercialization activity from over 4000 inventors, we find evidence that macroeconomic conditions...

This paper describes two dimensions of the international patenting process: application outcomes and pendency periods using matched samples of patent applications filed at the Australian Patent Office (APO), the Japanese Patent Office (JPO), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)...

A challenge for applied studies of innovation is to find quality-adjusted and unbiased measures for the extent and type of innovative activity in firms. This paper considers, in the light of the uses for these measures, how well we expect these common indicators quantify innovative services and...