In a patent thicket licensing provides a mechanism to either avoid or resolve hold-up. Firms' R&D incentives will differ depending on how licensing is used. In this paper we study the choice between ex ante licensing to avoid hold-up and ex post licensing to resolve it. Building on a theoretical...

In a patent thicket licensing provides a mechanism to either avoid or resolve hold up. We study the choice between ex ante licensing to avoid hold up and ex post licensing to resolve it. Firms' choice of licensing contract is studied in the context of a patent portfolio race. We show that high...

Complex high technology industries are increasingly affected by patent thickets in which firms' patents mutually block the use of important technologies. Firms facing patent thickets patent intensively to acquire bargaining chips and use licensing to ensure freedom to operate. Such licensing...

In the last decades, technologies became more complex which increased the degree of uncertainty in R&D. To overcome the uncertainty, firms frequently engage in R&D collaborations, e.g., Research Joint Ventures (RJVs), and licensing agreements. While RJVs are well explored in the literature, very...

The aim of the study is to explain if the foreclosure effect on prices is explained by a lower quality of foreclosed houses, which is a crucial aspect in the intelligibility of foreclosures. Based on a novel and comprehensive dataset, we estimate the impact of foreclosure on home prices in...

The U.S. and EU Merger Guidelines strongly emphasize the relevance of the "ease of entry" argument in merger evaluations. Up to now, very little is known empirically about how mergers affect entry and exit, and the resulting number of firms in the markets. We empirically test this aspect of...

Mergers realize heterogeneous competitive effects on profits, production, and prices. To date, it is unclear whether differential merger outcomes are caused mostly by firms' technology or product market attributes. Furthermore, empirical merger studies conventionally assume that, conditional on...