We study the effects of an institution that pools patents across geographical markets on the licensing and adoption of life-saving drugs in low- and middle-income countries. Using data on licensing and sales for HIV, hepatitis C and tuberculosis drugs, we show that there is an immediate and...

We study the causal impact of patent invalidation on subsequent innovation and exit by the patent holder. The analysis is based on patent litigation at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and exploits the random allocation of judges to control for endogeneity of the judicial...

Cumulative innovation is central to economic growth. Do patent rights facilitate or impede follow-on innovation? We study the causal effect of removing patent rights by court invalidation on subsequent research related to the focal patent, as measured by later citations. We exploit random...

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 explores the sources of uncertainty that cause firms to revise their capital investment plans and the stock market to revise its valuation of those firms. A simple method is developed to decompose the uncertainty governing revisions in investment plans and the stock market rate of...

This paper presents quantitative estimates of the private value of property rights conferred by patent protection for different technology fields and countries of ownership. The measures are derived from parametric estimation of a model of patent renewal, using a new data set on patent renewals...

We study the impact of consumers' risk perception on firm innovation. Our analysis exploits a major surge in the perceived risk of radiation diagnostic devices, following extensive media coverage of a set of over-radiation accidents involving CT scanners in late 2009. Difference-in-differences...

Liability laws designed to compensate for harms caused by defective products may also affect innovation. We examine this issue by exploiting a major quasi-exogenous increase in liability risk faced by US suppliers of polymers used to manufacture medical implants. Difference-in-differences...

Are CEOs' attitudes and beliefs linked to their fims' innovative performance? This paper uses Malmendier and Tate's measure of overconfidence, based on CEO stock-option exercise, to study the relationship between a CEO's "revealed beliefs" about future performance and standard measures of...

What factors affect the diffusion of new economic institutions? This paper examines this question by exploiting the introduction of the first regularized patent system, which appeared in the Venetian Republic in 1474. We begin by developing a model that links patenting activity of craft guilds...