We discuss how a seller can appropriate rents when selling knowledge that lacks legal property rights by solving either an expropriation or a valuation problem and then analyze how seller rents increase when a portion of the intellectual property (IP) can be protected. The analysis shows that a...

We examine the diversification patterns of almost all publicly listed non-financial companies in China during the 2001 to 2005 period. More than 70 percent of the firms in our sample are diversified. We document that patterns of diversification strongly depend on firms' political connections....