What is the role of startups within the innovation ecosystem? Since 2000, startups have grown in their share of commercializing research from top U.S. universities; however, prior work has little to say on the particular advantages of startup ventures in the innovation process relative to more...

Do stronger intellectual property rights incentivize female participation in innovation? We provide new evidence on this question using a unique database of artificial intelligence patents publicly shared by the USPTO. Our identification strategy leverages China's WTO TRIPs accession, which led...

We examine the impact of lost intellectual property protection on innovation, competition, acquisitions, lawsuits and employment agreements. We consider firms whose ability to protect intellectual property (IP) using patents is weakened following the Alice Corp. vs. CLS Bank International...

We provide evidence that over the past 30 years, U.S. firms have expanded their scope of operations. Increases in scope and scale were achieved largely without increasing traditional operating segments. Scope expansion significantly increases valuation and is primarily realized through...

We explore how financial constraints distort the entry decisions among otherwise productive entrepreneurs and limit growth of promising young firms. A model of liquidity-constrained entrepreneurs suggests that the easing of credit constraints can induce more entry of firms with greater long-run...

We examine the relationship between product liability litigation and innovation by systematically combining data on product liability lawsuits with data on new product introductions in a panel dataset of leading medical device firms. We first document a decline in the propensity to introduce new...

Drawing insights from the field of innovation economics, we discuss the likely competitive environment shaping generative AI advances. Central to our analysis are the concepts of appropriability--whether firms in the industry are able to control the knowledge generated by their innovations--and...

More than 1,500 organizations and investors representing over $40 trillion in assets have committed to fossil fuel divestment to combat climate change. Will it work? This chapter explores whether divestment might induce green innovation, a critical component of transitioning to a cleaner...

Understanding factors affecting the direction of innovation is a central aim of research in the economics of innovation. Progress on this topic has been inhibited by difficulties in measuring distance and movement in knowledge space. We describe a methodology that infers the mapping of the...