Consistent with theoretical models that show disclosure can reduce uncertain investments, we find that mandating risk disclosure is negatively associated with corporate innovation. Using a textual analysis of a large sample of 10-K filings for US firms, we identify a negative relationship...

Innovation success depends heavily on firm's ability to set priorities and select the most promising options from its project portfolio before the odds of success or failure become visible and reliable. We ask: What does previous innovation experience tell firms about what not to do in the...

Operationalizing the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety will require resolving disputes about the meaning of the term 'precautionary approach' in the treaty text. Although the terms precautionary approach and precautionary principle have been referred to in the regulation of transgenic plants for...

It is a common concern that pricing pressure by powerful buyers discourages suppliers' R&D investments. Employing a simple monopsonist - competitive upstream industry - framework, this paper qualifies this view in two respects. First, the monopsonist has an incentive to subsidize upstream R&D...

The imperfect appropriability of revenues from innovation affects the incentives of firms to invest, and to disclose information about their innovative productivity. It creates a free-rider effect in the competition for the innovation that countervails the familiar business-stealing effect....

An innovative firm chooses strategically whether to patent its process innovation or rely on secrecy. By doing so, the firm manages its rival’s beliefs about the size of the innovation, and affects the incentives in the product market. Different measures of competitive pressure in the product...

Suppliers play a major role in innovation processes. We analyze ownership allocations and the choice of R&D technology in vertical R&D cooperations. Given incomplete contracts on the R&D outcome, there is a tradeoff between R&D specifically designed towards a manufacturer (increasing investment...

This paper combines three prototype endogenous growth models, the models with human capital accumulation introduced by Uzawa [1965] and Lucas [1988], variety expansion by Romer [1990], and quality improvements by Aghion and Howitt [1992], in order to investigate how these three engines of growth...

This paper examines how product market competition affects firms' timing of adopting a new technology as well as whether the market provides sufficient adoption incentives. It shows that adoption dates differ not only among symmetric firms but also among markets with Cournot and Bertrand...