Previous work studying the age distribution of citations for patents relies on functional form assumptions to address the co-linearity between the birth year, citation year, and age. This paper proposes a non-parametric identification strategy that uses the lag between application and grant as a...

Previous research studies the age profile of patent citations to learn about knowledge flows over time. However, identification is problematic because of the collinearity between application year, citation year, and patent age. We show empirically that a patent's ‘citation clock’ does not...

One strategy for promoting female leaders in STEM professions is to appoint more women to the committees that select leaders. Unfortunately, evidence from other settings, such as committees for selecting judges or professors, suggests this approach does not work. We use a natural experiment to...

We exploit a change in eligibility rules for the Canadian Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SRED) tax credit to gain insight on how tax credits impact small-firm R&D expenditures. After a 2004 program change, privately owned firms that became eligible for a 35 percent tax credit...

"Entrepreneurs often rely on intellectual property (IP) to earn a return on their innovations, and also compatibility standards, which allow them to supply specialized components for a shared technology platform. This paper compares the IP strategies of small entrepreneurs and large incumbents...

This paper studies the intellectual property strategy of firms that participate in the formal standards process. Specifically, we examine litigation rates in a sample of patents disclosed to thirteen voluntary Standard Setting Organizations (SSOs). We find that SSO patents have a relatively high...

This paper studies how firms reorganize following diversification, proposing that firms use outsourcing, or vertical disintegration, to manage diseconomies of scope. We also consider the origins of scope diseconomies, showing how different underlying mechanisms generate contrasting predictions...

How much are we influenced by an author's identity when evaluating his or her work? This paper exploits a natural experiment to measure the impact of status signals in the context of open standards development. For a period of time, e-mails announcing new submissions to the Internet Engineering...

Are the attitudes and beliefs of chief executive officers (CEOs) linked to their firms' innovative performance? This paper uses a measure of overconfidence, based on CEO stock-option exercise, to study the relationship between a CEO's "revealed beliefs" about future performance and standard...