We develop a theory of innovation for entry and sale into oligopoly, and show that inventions of higher quality are more likely to be sold (or licensed) to an incumbent due to strategic product market effects on the sales price. Such preemptive acquisitions by incumbents are shown to stimulate...

When and how do entrepreneurs sell their inventions? To address this issue, we develop an endogenous entry-sale asymmetric information oligopoly model. We show that lowquality inventions are sold directly or used for entry. Inventors who sell post-entry use entry to credibly reveal information...

Why do so many high-priced acquisitions of entrepreneurial firms take place in network industries? We develop a theory of commercialization (entry or sale) in network industries showing that high equilibrium acquisition prices are driven by the incumbents' desire to prevent rivals from acquiring...

We find an inverted relation between a players birthday and the likelihood of receiving the Ballon dOr (awarded to the best football player in the world). We develop a multi-period skill formation model with selection into elite education. We show that those born late (underdogs) need to work...

Entrepreneurs face higher commercialization costs than incumbents. We show that this implies that entrepreneurs will choose more risky projects than incumbents, aiming to reduce their high expected marginal commercialization cost. However, entrepreneurs may select too safe projects from a social...

Private equity firms are an important part of the industrial restructuring process. We argue that the key is temporary ownership. Buying to sell induces aggressive restructuring since the equilibrium trade sale price increases both because the profits of the acquiring incumbent increase and the...

Many governments promote small businesses for the dual reasons of fostering ‘breakthrough' innovations and employment growth. In this paper we study the effects of tax and subsidy policies on entrepreneurs' choice of riskiness of an innovation project and on their mode of commercializing the...

The creation and scaling of startups are associated with risk-taking and different types of owners treat these risks differently. We show how an active venture capital (VC) market affects risk-taking in research and scaling decisions of startups. VC-backed startups will choose more high-risk,...

We provide a model that explains the following empirical observations: i) private ownership is more efficient than public ownership, ii) privatizations are associated with increases in efficiency and iii) the increase in efficiency predates the privatization. The two key mechanisms explaining...

What explains the world-wide trend of pro-entrepreneurial policies in the last few decades? We study entrepreneurial policy in a lobbying model taking into account the conflict of interest between entrepreneurs and incumbents. It is shown that international market integration leads to more...