We examine the impact of enforcing non-compete covenants (CNC) on the formation and performance of new firms using matched employer-employee data on 30 US states. To identify the impact of CNC, we exploit the inter-state variation in CNC enforcement along with the fact that courts do not enforce...

The economic costs of environmental regulations have been widely debated since the U.S. began to restrict pollution emissions more than four decades ago. Using detailed production data from nearly 1.2 million plant observations drawn from the 1972-1993 Annual Survey of Manufactures, we estimate...

This paper investigates whether executives who evidence a propensity for personal tax evasion (suspect executives) are associated with tax sheltering at the firm level. I adapt recent research to identify the presence of these executives and examine associations between suspect executive...

Our objective in this paper is to review what economists have said about incentive schemes to promote R&D, including intellectual property. While we focus on environments in which other forms of protection are not available, we note that other protections can obviate the need for any formal...

In several landmark cases, the European Court of Justice has ruled that member states of the European Union are liable for damages caused by an infringement of European Law if the violation is sufficiently serious. This article analyses the incentive effects of liability rules on member states...

With cumulative innovation and imperfect information about the value of innovations, intellectual property rights can result in hold-up and therefore it may be better not to have them. Extending the basic cumulative innovation model to include `sampling' by second-stage firms, we find that the...

This note focuses on the design of prevention programmes and the role of tort law regarding the control of risky activities, associated with unknown or imperfectly known risks, such as innovation or (long term) environmental damages. Together with the existence of perception bias on the side of...

An extensive empirical literature indicates that returns from innovation are appropriated primarily via mechanisms other than formal intellectual property rights -- and that `imitation' is itself a costly activity. However most theory assumes the pure nonrivalry of `ideas' with its implication...

Beginning in the early 1990s, stricter government regulation to protect public health and the environment led to radical changes in waste technology and management in the United States. More stringent regulation induced wholly new technologies, including the lining of landfills, the control of...

?We consider a cumulative innovation process in which a follow-on innovator invests in R&D activities that influence both the expected commercial value as well as the novelty of its innovation. When the second innovator investments are not servable,licensing of the first innovation never occurs...