This paper investigates whether aligning manager and owner incentives can improve the innovation performance of firms. We find that pay-sensitivity works to align managerial actions to shareholder interests. As managerial wealth becomes more sensitive to the firm's stock price the innovation...

We investigate whether the equity-linked components of top executive pay have an effect on patenting activity within a firm. We find a positive relationship between firm patenting activity and managerial alignment incentives created by stock and stock option grants. Prior work has shown that the...

This paper develops a sequential application-grant framework to analyze competing explanations for the two U.S. patent surges during the mid-eighties and early nineties: (a) the ¿friendly court¿ hypothesis argues that legislative changes in the 1980s lowered the cost of patenting and led to...

The rate of patenting in the U.S. has exploded in the last half of the 1990s. It is widely believed that the increase in patent grants is at least partly a result of the apparent decline in examination standards. There has been little exploration, however, of the theoretical prediction that a...

This paper studies the innovation response of upstream technology suppliers when their downstream technology buyers transition from regulation to product market competition. First, we develop a theoretical framework that models this particular organizational structure. Second, we use the US...

La protection juridique des méthodes commerciales liées à Internet est très controversée. Est-il opportun de protéger des biens immatériels ou des idées ? N'est-ce pas menacer durablement le développement de la "nouvelle économie" ? N'est-ce pas brider l'activité inventive et...

In recent years, understanding the structure and function of complex networks has become the foundation for explaining many different real- world complex social, information, biological and technological phenomena. Techniques from statistical physics have been successfully applied to the...

This paper analyzes the effects of public subsidies on R&D expenditure in the German manufacturing sector. The focus is on the question whether public R&D funding stimulates or crowds out private investment. Cross sectional data at the firm level is used. By applying parametric and...