This paper provides a theory of strategic innovation project choice by incumbents and start-ups. We show that prohibiting killer acquisitions strictly reduces the variety of innovation projects. By contrast, we find that prohibiting other acquisitions only has a weakly negative innovation...

The purpose of this study is to present a unique database on commercialized patents and to illustrate how it can be used to analyze the commercialization process of patents. The dataset is based on a survey of Swedish patents owned by inventors and small firms with a remarkably high response...

This paper investigates the effect of mandatory disclosure requirements for private firms on their decision to go public. Using detailed project-level data for biopharmaceutical firms, we explore the effects of a legal reform---the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act (FDAAA)---which...

We analyze the impact of firm's asset uniqueness and its growth opportunities on the leasing decisions of U.S. startups. To test our hypotheses, we use a unique dataset provided by the Kauffman Foundation. Our results show that startups in the high-technology sector have a lower propensity to...

Both theoretical and empirical studies provide mixed predictions when looking at the impact of corporate ownership on innovation. Contributing to this discussion, this paper conducts a causality test of the relation between the ownership concentration of firms and their innovation, measured by...

Pressure from institutional money managers to generate profits in the short run is often blamed for corporate myopia. Theoretical research suggests that money managers' short term focus stems from their career concerns and greater fund transparency can amplify these concerns. Using a...

We study the relation between innovation quality and managerial time horizon, measured by the time remaining until the end of fixed-term CEO employment contracts. Firms with longer CEO horizons produce more important innovation on average: one additional year in horizon is associated with 8%...

This paper studies how hedge fund activism impacts corporate innovation. Firms targeted by activists improve their innovation efficiency over the five-year period following hedge fund intervention. Despite a tightening in R&D expenditures, target firms increase innovation output, as measured by...

Using NBER patent data and hedge fund holdings in U.S. firms during 1998-2006, we study the effect of hedge fund ownership on corporate innovation. We find that hedge fund ownership promotes both patent quantity and quality, even after controlling for endogeneity. This stimulating effect is more...

We study the effect of antitakeover provisions (ATPs) on innovation. To establish causality, we use a regression discontinuity approach that relies on locally exogenous variation generated by shareholder proposal votes. We find a positive, causal effect of ATPs on innovation. This positive...