This paper argues incumbent firms may acquire innovative targets solely to discontinue the target's innovation projects and preempt future competition. We call such acquisitions "killer acquisitions." We develop a model illustrating this phenomenon. Using pharmaceutical industry data, we show...

Learning from the experiences of other innovators is a crucial aspect of the innovation process when several workers or teams explore new research avenues in parallel. In such a setting, under-exploration may result as workers attempt to free-ride on the new ideas generated by co-workers. This...

Firms have inefficiently low incentives to innovate when other firms benefit from their inventions and the innovating firm therefore does not capture the full surplus of its innovations. We show that common ownership of firms mitigates this impediment to corporate innovation. By contrast,...