This paper presents an easy-to-use measure of patent scope that is grounded both in patent law and in the practices of patent attorneys. We validate our measure by showing both that patent attorneys' subjective assessments of scope agree with our estimates, and that the behaviour of patenters is...

It is a triumph of technology and of economics that our computer chips are so universal. Countless applications are only possible because of the staggering variety of calculations that modern chips can compute. But, this was not always the case. Computers used to be specialized, doing only...

While numerous academic studies sufficiently bond the emergence of (radical) innovations to macroeconomic growth (Plosser (1989); Freeman and Perez (1988); Mansfield (1983); Mensch (1979); Jovanovic and Lach (1997); Giedeman and Simons (2006)), the competitive mechanisms that influence small...

Innovative high-tech small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are thought to be drivers of economic renewal and growth. However, due to their limited size, SMEs face two fundamental innovation barriers: the risk that other organizations appropriate the returns to the newly created knowledge by...

Traditionally, regulations are seen as harmful for the starting and growing of firms. However, strict environmental regulation can also trigger the discovery and introduction of clean technologies, and this innovation might improve the competitiveness of the firm (the so-called Porter...