We consider philanthropy by college alums from an innovative and provocative perspective: what if prospective college students were considered members of assets classes with different risk-return combinations? Using forty years of merged admissions-philanthropy records on students at a highly...

Although previous empirical studies have found relationships between patent characteristics and value, none have determined how specific attributes relate to auction value or even the probability of a successful auction sale. Using a Heckman two-step model, we regress thirteen independent...

There are two counter-intuitive trends in technological collaboration currently at work, making collaborative patent applications less common but where they exist, the collaborations involve more partners. Patent data are used to examine these trends along with the impact of two recent policy...

The impacts of two recent changes in US patent policy depend on the length of time it takes for an invention to go through the examination process. Concerns over the distributional effects of these changes were expressed during policy debates. We use data on U.S. patent applications and grants...

The role of public sentiment in stock market volatility has recently become increasingly relevant. Twitter, in theory, offers an inexpensive way to measure real-time public sentiment. We take advantage of a natural experiment to assess the potential improvement that social media adds to forecast...

The effect of spatial factors on competition and the price of gasoline have been sparsely explored by previous studies. Existing work examines how gasoline prices differ based on distance from the distribution site as well as how cost factors influence gasoline prices. Using market data from six...

Using over 250,000 U.S. patent citations, we test whether knowledge transfers in the energy sector are sensitive to distance, and whether that sensitivity has changed over time. Controlling for self-citation by inventor, assignee and examiner, multivariate regression analysis shows that physical...

COVID infections and deaths in the United States have affected racial groups differentially. Until now, there has been no analysis of the role that structural racism plays in those health outcomes. We use three models of ascending complexity to quantify the state-level impacts of reporting bias,...