Among U.S. public firms, technological innovation is concentrated in a small set of large players, with innovation “leaders” having considerably lower systematic risk than “laggards.” To understand this fact, we build a winner-takes-all patent-race model and show that a firm's expected...

We study the implications of the creative destruction lifecycle of innovation for asset prices. We develop a general equilibrium model of endogenous firm creation and destruction where 'incremental' innovations by incumbents and 'radical' innovations by entrants drive productivity improvements....