In 2004, Canada changed the eligibility rules for its Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SRED) tax credit, which provides tax incentives for R&D conducted by small private firms. Difference in difference estimates show a seventeen percent increase in total R&D among eligible...

Representation of women and minorities in a “selectorate” — the group that chooses an organization’s leaders — is a key mechanism for promoting diversity. We show that representation, on its own, is not sufficient for selecting gender diversity: a supportive organizational culture is...

Declining circulation and advertising revenue have led many newspapers to cut costs by shrinking their in-house staff and sourcing more content from external wire agencies. In this study, we analyze how the mix of in-house and wired content impacts online readers’ subscription decisions using...

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...

Continuations allow inventors to claim technology developed after the original filing date of their patent, leading to concerns about inadvertent infringement and hold-up. We use the link between patents and standards created by the disclosure of standard essential patents (SEPs) to analyze the...

We study the impact of Standard Setting Organization (SSO) intellectual property rights (IPR) policies on standardization and innovation. Specifically, we conduct a pair of event studies for two well known IPR policy revisions: a switch from Fair Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) to...

Continuations allow inventors to claim technology developed after the original filing date of their patent, leading to concerns about inadvertent infringement and hold-up. We use the link between patents and standards created by the disclosure of standard essential patents (SEPs) to analyze the...

We study a dynamic model of the decision to continue or abandon a research project. Researchers improve their ideas over time and also learn whether those ideas will be adopted by the scientific community. Projects are abandoned as researchers grow more pessimistic about their chance of success....

This paper matches archival data from the Uniform Code Council to establishments in the Longitudinal Business Database and Economic Census to study the diffusion and impacts of the Universal Product Code (UPC). We find evidence of network effects in the diffusion process. Matched-sample...

We study the matching of patent applications to examiners at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Using test statistics originally developed to identify industry agglomeration, we find strong evidence that examiners specialize in particular technologies, even within relatively homogeneous art...