Within the political economy of informational capitalism, commercial surveillance practices are tools for resource extraction. That process requires an enabling legal construct, which this essay identifies and explores. Contemporary practices of personal information processing constitute a new...

Although economic globalization has transformed contemporary conceptions of space, location still matters enormously for both individual entrepreneurs seeking to develop a sustainable business and policy makers looking to foster entrepreneurship within a particular city or region. In making the...

Using detailed barcode-level data in the US retail sector, I find that from 2004 to 2013 higher-income households systematically experienced a larger increase in product variety and a lower inflation rate for continuing products. Annual inflation was 0.65 percentage points lower for households...

The patent system is usually described in terms of opposites, like producers versus trolls or software versus pharma. But the reality is a far more complex set of layers, including enforcers, patentees, and technology. This study of twenty-five years of patent litigation by highly litigious...

A growing empirical literature uses patent citations as a quality-adjusted measure for innovation, despite concerns about the validity of this measure. This paper links patents with objective measures of improvements in the quality of patented inventions – measured through performance in field...

Should there be limits on startup acquisitions by dominant firms? Efficiency requires that startups sell their technology to the right incumbents, that they develop the right technology, and that they invest the right amount in R&D. In a model of differentiated oligopoly, we show distortions...

We examine how product market competition affects the disclosure of innovation. Theory posits that product market competition can cause firms to increase their disclosure of innovation to deter product market competitors. Consistent with this reasoning, we find that patent applicants in more...

We find that small innovators earn higher returns than small non-innovators for up to five years. We find no such innovation premium among large firms. A battery of tests shows that this innovation premium among small firms is explained by risk. Our findings, which are based on a simple measure...

It has been argued that “General Purpose Technologies” (GPTs) have the power to change the pace and direction of economic progress. Although there is empirical evidence on the virtuous effect of the diffusion of these technologies, this evidence is mostly based, if not exclusively, on...

This paper studies the asset pricing implications of technology spillover, an important externality in innovation. While technology spillover enables firms to produce a variety of products that better satisfy their customers' love for variety, such benefits are procyclical, and investors...