While the potential for intellectual property rights to inhibit the diffusion of scientific knowledge is at the heart of several contemporary policy debates, evidence for the %u201Canti-commons effect%u201D has been anecdotal. A central issue in this debate is how intellectual property rights...

Through our historical analysis of the evolution of biotechnology, we show that highly varied understandings of the value embodied in biotechnology existed. Across three eras (1973-1986 and 1988-2000 and 2003-present), entrepreneurs constructed different economic logics for biotechnology, often...

We analyze longitudinal data on academic careers and conduct interviews with faculty members to determine the scope and causes of the gender gap in patenting among life scientists over a 30-year period show that women faculty members patent at about 40 percent of the rate of men. We find that...

An important element of an entrepreneurial firm's ability to create innovative capabilities is having access to a pool of talented employees. This article examines biotechnology clusters in Cambridge (UK) and Munich (Germany) to investigate to what degree macro-labor market institutions affect...