This paper examines the litigation of patents relating to financial products and services. I show that these grants are being litigated at a rate 27 to 39 times greater than that of patents as a whole. The patents being litigated are disproportionately those issued to individuals and to smaller,...

The paper seeks to understand the impact of the patent system on innovation by examining shifts in the strength of patent protection across sixty countries and a 150-year period. An examination of 177 policy changes reveals that strengthening patent protection appears to have few positive...

We examine thousands of U.S. private equity (PE) buyouts from 1980 to 2013, a period that saw huge swings in credit market tightness and GDP growth. Our results show striking, systematic differences in the real-side effects of PE buyouts, depending on buyout type and external conditions....

The growth of the private equity industry has spurred concerns about its potential impact on the economy more generally. This analysis looks across nations and industries to assess the impact of private equity on industry performance. Industries where PE funds have invested in the past five...

Evidence on the "funding gap" for investment innovation is surveyed. The focus is on financial market reasons for underinvestment that exist even when externality-induced underinvestment is absent. We conclude that while small and new innovative firms experience high costs of capital that are...

This paper examines the direct private equity investment strategies across sovereign wealth funds and their relationship to the funds' organizational structures. SWFs seem to engage in a form of trend chasing, since they are more likely to invest at home when domestic equity prices are higher,...

While variations in public securities markets across nations have attracted increasing scrutiny, private financings have received little attention. But in developing nations, the bulk of financings are private ones. This paper analyzes 210 private equity transactions in developing countries. We...

Financial innovation has been both praised as the engine of growth of society and castigated for being the source of the weakness of the economy. In this paper, we review the literature on financial innovation and highlight the similarities and differences between financial innovation and other...

This paper examines how government funding programs geared towards early-stage companies interact with private capital markets. Using hand-collected data on 755 government programs worldwide, we find that governments' allocations to such funding programs have been comparable to global venture...

This paper examines investments made by 13 angel groups across 21 countries. We compare applicants just above and below the funding cutoff and find that these angel investors have a positive impact on the growth, performance, and survival of firms as well as their follow-on fundraising. The...