The appropriability of innovation depends not only on the instruments available to an innovator to protect private returns, but how those instruments interact with each other as part of the firm's entrepreneurial strategy. We consider the interplay between two appropriability mechanisms...

While the cumulative nature of knowledge is recognized as central to economic growth, the microeconomic foundations of cumulativeness are less understood. This paper investigates the impact of a research-enhancing institution on cumulativeness, highlighting two effects. First, a selection effect...

The acceleration of start-up activity is often cited as a rationale for the R&D tax credit, a key innovation policy instrument adopted increasingly by US states over the past quarter century. While there is a strong empirical base linking the R&D tax credit to increased R&D expenditures and...

This paper develops a novel approach for assessing the role of passive learning versus a proactive growth orientation in the entrepreneurial growth process. We develop a simple model linking early-stage founder choices, venture capital investment and skewed growth outcomes such as the...

This paper provides a theoretical investigation of the tension over knowledge disclosure between firms and their scientific employees. While empirical research suggests that scientists exhibit a "taste for science," such open disclosures can limit a firm's competitive advantage or ability to...

We define foundational competitiveness as the expected level of output per working-age individual that is supported by the overall quality of a country as a place to do business. The focus on output per potential worker, a broader measure of national productivity than output per current worker,...

The majority of IPOs and acquisitions are achieved without venture capital financing, yet research has focused mostly on VC backed firms. Using founding choices and a predictive analytics approach on virtually all US registered businesses, we shed light into these “missing” growth firms....

Artificial intelligence may greatly increase the efficiency of the existing economy. But it may have an even larger impact by serving as a new general-purpose “method of invention” that can reshape the nature of the innovation process and the organization of R&D. We distinguish between...

This paper considers the role of Rosenbergian uncertainty (i.e., economic uncertainties that arise after successful invention) in shaping appropriability for start-up innovators. Rather than assuming that the appropriability regime surrounding an innovation is exogenous, we focus on the...

Recent work linking the adoption of key organizational practices to productivity raises an important question: if adoption increases productivity so dramatically, why does adoption across an industry take so long? This paper explores this question in the context of one particularly interesting...