We study how incentives to boost short-term performance affect longer-term innovation output. Share repurchases that are motivated by an incentive to meet current-quarter EPS targets are associated with an increase in the quality of innovation outputs such as forward citation counts and the...

We show that financial constraints may benefit innovation by improving the efficiency of innovative activities. We measure firm-level innovative efficiency by patents (or patent citations) scaled by R&D (research and development) investment or the number of employees, and find that financial...

Firms can become less innovative following a sudden “inflow” of cash. Specifically, multinational firms that were eligible to repatriate (and indeed repatriated) cash to the U.S. under the American Jobs Creation Act generate less valuable patents than otherwise similar firms. They also...