How does patent examination influence access to finance for innovative firms? We exploit a reform to the UK's patent system that introduced substantive examination to the patent application process, improving the information available to potential investors on the value of firms' patents. Using...

This paper makes use of a reform that allowed firms to use patents as stand-alone collateral, to estimate the magnitude of collateral constraints and to quantify the aggregate impact of these constraints on misallocation and productivity. Using matched firm-bank data for Norway, we find that...

How does antitrust enforcement against patent-based monopolies affect innovation? I address this question by empirically studying the US antitrust case against Xerox, the monopolist in the market for plain-paper copiers. In 1975, Xerox was ordered to license all its copier-technology patents in...

When merging firms across large databases in the absence of common identifiers, text algorithms can help. I propose a high-performance fuzzy firm name matching algorithm that uses existing computational methods and works even under hardware restrictions. The algorithm consists of four steps,...

This paper provides a first comprehensive quantitative analysis of optimal patent policy in the global economy. We introduce a new framework, which combines trade and growth theory into a tractable tool for quantitative research. Our application delivers three main results. First, the potential...

In this paper we replicate most of the stylized facts characterizing the decline in business dynamism in the USA highlighted by Akcigit and Ates (2021) and provide an explanation of their emergence by means of a macroeconomic agent-based model populated by two types of firms: innovators who...

Regional domestic activity can provide valuable insights on whether these activities can fuel innovation activity of international impact. This paper provides an alternative strategy in measuring regional innovative activity based on the number of applications of various forms of Intellectual...

The article attempts to show the role of the patent system in the internationalization of diffusion of technical knowledge. Its purpose is to analyse, use of international technical knowledge made available through patent systems, by Polish companies that are inventively active. For its...

We study the blocking effect of patents on follow-on innovation by others. We posit that follow-on innovation requires freedom to operate (FTO), which firms typically obtain through a license from the patentee holding the original innovation. Where licensing fails, follow-on innovation is...