Worker mobility across firms can enhance innovation by spreading knowledge, but such mobility may also hinder … innovation by making firms reluctant to invest in R&D. A common way that firms limit workers' mobility is with noncompete … agreements (NCAs). We examine how the legal enforceability of NCAs affects innovation, as measured by patenting, using data on …

,786 public corporations, and measures of both patent quality and patent value, we find that, while average invention value rises …

locations. In 12 of these areas, innovation is particularly concentrated in a single, large firm; we refer to such locations as …

risks. We find that better appropriability in the sense of more effective patent strength and secrecy has a strong negative …

effect on innovation. We develop a simple "trapped factor" model of innovation that is consistent with these empirical …

This paper documents the increasing importance of software for successful innovation in manufacturing sectors well …

This paper examines the impact of government assistance through R&D grants on innovation output for firms in New … the probability that a firm in the manufacturing and service sectors applies for a patent during 2005-2009, but no … the world while its effects on process innovation and any product innovation are relatively much weaker. Moreover, there …

We use the U.S. patent data merged with firm-level datasets to establish new facts about the role of mega firms in … patent)--and their hits tend to generate more follow-on patents assigned to other firms when compared to hits generated by …

Open source is key to innovation, but we know little about how to incentivize it. In this paper, we examine the impact …'s launch. The second is that the actual receipt of sponsorship has a long-lasting negative effect on innovation, as measured by …

We document political sentiment effects on US inventors. Democratic inventors are more likely to patent (relative to …