AT&T was the largest U.S. firm for most of the 20th century. Telephone operators once comprised over 50% of its workforce, but in the late 1910s it initiated a decades-long process of automating telephone operation with mechanical call switching--a technology first invented in the 1880s. We...

Cellular telephone is an example of a new product that has significantly affected how Americans live. Since their introduction in 1983, cellular telephone adoption has grown at 25-35% per year such that at year end 1996 about 42 million cellular telephones are in use in the U.S. However,...

This paper builds a model of stock exchange competition tailored to the institutional and regulatory details of the modern U.S. stock market. The model shows that under the status quo market design: (i) trading behavior across the seemingly fragmented exchanges is as if there is just a single...

Though fundamental to innovation and essential to many industries and occupations, individual creativity has received limited attention as an economic behavior and has historically proven difficult to study. This paper studies the incentive effects of competition on individuals' creative...

We study why high-priced acquisitions of entrants by an incumbent do not necessarily stimulate more innovation and entry in an industry (like that of digital platforms) where customers face switching costs and enjoy network externalities. The prospect of an acquisition by the incumbent platform...

Using new measures of expanded Internet access in China and internet-based search, we examine how competitive shocks from China impact U.S. innovation through the markets for innovation and existing products. We identify shocks to innovation competition using the geography of Chinese internet...

We examine the impact of Chinese import competition on patenting, IT, R&D and TFP using a panel of up to half a million firms over 1996-2007 across twelve European countries. We correct for endogeneity using the removal of product-specific quotas following China's entry into the World Trade...

This paper examines the impact of government-sponsored venture capitalists (GVCs) on the success of enterprises. Using international enterprise-level data, we identify a surprising non-monotonicity in the effect of GVC on the likelihood of exit via initial public offerings (IPOs) or third party...

It is important to understand the factors that influence a country's transition from the production of low-quality to high-quality products since the production of high-quality goods is often viewed as a pre-condition for export success and, ultimately, for economic development. In this paper,...

This paper investigates the relative performance of enterprises backed by government-sponsored venture capitalists and private venture capitalists. While previous studies focus mainly on investor returns, this paper focuses on a broader set of public policy objectives, including value-creation,...