We examine the impact of enforcing non-compete covenants (CNC) on the formation and performance of new firms using matched employer-employee data on 30 US states. To identify the impact of CNC, we exploit the inter-state variation in CNC enforcement along with the fact that courts do not enforce...

This study examines how the human capital of spinout founders and the performance of parent firms affect the success of spinouts by using a matched employer-employee dataset of new ventures covering 7 SIC 1-digit sectors in the United States. Our data cover 29,100 spinouts and 379,800 new...

We examine the role of human capital in employees’ decisions to leave their parent firms andform spinouts. Using a large sample of individuals who formed spinouts in manufacturing industries between 1992 and 2005, and their co-workers who did not, we find that after controlling for age,...

This paper characterizes inter-industry heterogeneity in rates of learning-by-doing and examines how industry learning rates are connected with firm performance. Using data from the Census Bureau and Compustat, we measure the industry learning rate as the coefficient on cumulative output in a...

In this study, we present novel statistics on the patenting in US manufacturing and new evidence on the question of what happens when firms patent. We do so by creating a comprehensive firm-patent matched dataset that links the NBER patent data (covering the universe of patents) to firm data...

We propose an industry-level index of capital resalability-the share of used capital in aggregate industry capital expenditure-that relates (inversely) to sunkenness of investments. Using data from U.S. manufacturing, we then test the effect of capital resalability on industry productivity...

Prior firm experience, firm capabilities, and the industry environment are known to be important determinants of new-venture performance. We hypothesize that firm experience prior to setting up a new venture influences the ability to learn from experience after start-up (which is a key...

We build a new concordance between the NBER Patent Data and U.S. Census microdata and use it to examine what happens when firms patent. We find strong evidence that increases in patent stock are associated with increases in firm size, scope, and skill and capital intensity. We find somewhat...

This note provides details about the construction of the NBER Patent Data-BR concordance, and is intended for researchers planning to use this concordance. In addition to describing the matching process used to construct the concordance, this note provides a discussion of the benefits and...