High backward-citation patent scores indicated that inventive firms had positive prospects for future returns (as evidenced by their Tobin's <I>q</I> ratios) because patents incorporating substantial external knowledge were also broadly-cited. Results suggested a three-year lag in the market's positive...</i>

Patterns of patents' backward citations were used to test a new patent-score measure that suggested whether post-acquisition synergies had been realized (based on improvements in firms' patent scores after making acquisitions). We argue that where firms' post-acquisition patent scores showed...

This study examines the effects of technological mergers and acquisitions (M&A) on post-deal innovation and firm performance. We argue that technological M&A lead to an increase of the innovation output in terms of patent counts while non-technological deals do not. By using the novel matching...

Our distance-score methodology for constructing backward-dispersion scores is an improvement over the counting methodology that the Hall, et al. (2001) measures use because (a) it captures the effects of newly-synthesized technological-class codes that are different than the technology-class...

Patents have been touted as being the type of resource which provides a basis for longer-lived competitive advantage, but as technological change accelerates, even patents have become questionable sources of sustainable competitive advantage. In settings where no sources of competitive advantage...

Firms often choose to grow and diversify via mergers and acquisitions (M&A) because acquiring and integrating an ongoing entity is perceived to be a fast and less risky means of entering desirable markets, gaining new knowledge and new capabilities, or adding to the firm’s product line. In...

The paradox of making acquisitions is that they are difficult to repay — since the market has already priced most attainable operating improvements into the transaction price. By expanding upon Sirower's (1994) framework for identifying the required performance improvements (RPIs) needed to...