We study the innovation activity of firms going public and find that post-IPO innovation activity is highly associated with pre-IPO innovation activity at both venture-capital- and non-venture-capital-backed firms. This persistence in innovation suggests that firms' pre-IPO innovation experience...

We study innovation in newly public firms and find that VC-backing negatively impacts patent production and citations within the initial years of an IPO. Finding this effect to be more pronounced at firms with higher innovation activity pre-IPO, we conclude that this adverse impact is a...

We find a positive relation between mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity of a firm and its subsequent innovation outcome measured by the number and the novelty of the patents the firm obtains. The positive relation between M&A activity and innovation appears at least as significant as that...

We propose a novel mechanism through which established firms contribute to the startup ecosystem: the allocation of R&D tax credits to startups via the M&A channel. We show that when established firms become eligible for R&D tax credits, they increase their R&D and M&A activity. In particular,...