We study the relationship between the enforceability of covenants not to compete (CNCs) and employee mobility and wages. We exploit a 2015 CNC ban for technology workers in Hawaii and find that this ban increased mobility by 11% and new-hire wages by 4%. We supplement the Hawaii evaluation with...

This paper examines how the enforceability of noncompete covenants affects the creation, growth, and survival of spinouts and other new entrants. The impact of noncompete enforceability on new firms is ambiguous, since noncompetes reduce knowledge leakage but impose hiring costs. However, we...

Many of a firm’s most important informational or relational resources are at risk of diffusion to its competitors because they are embedded in the firm’s human capital. Using novel firm- and worker-level data, we present descriptive evidence on the adoption of and outcomes associated with...

We examine the role of human capital in employees' decisions to leave their parent firms and form spinouts. Using a large sample of individuals who formed spinouts in manufacturing industries between 1992 and 2005, and their co-workers who did not, we find that after controlling for age,...