A key input to inventive activity is human capital. Hence it is important to understand the monetary incentives of inventors. We estimate the effect of patented inventions on individual earnings by linking data on U.S. patents and their inventors to Finnish employer-employee data. Returns are...

A key input to inventive activity is human capital. Hence it is important to understand the monetary incentives of inventors. We estimate the effect of patented inventions on individual earnings by linking data on U.S. patents and their inventors to Finnish employer-employee data. Returns are...

The return that inventors appropriate from their inventions forms a key incentive and remuneration mechanism for innovation. We utilize data on U.S. patents and their inventors linked to Finnish employer-employee data to estimate the effect of patenting on earnings. Inventors get a temporary 3%...

A firm that owns a patent has a legal right to exclude. Applying for the patent, however, discloses discovery of an invention by the firm. Both the ownership of the right and the disclosure of the discovery expose the firm to an acquisition, because other firms may be interested in buying the...