We investigate the merger behavior of firms in the plant biotechnology sector using firm-level patent data for public and private firms in the 1980s and 1990s. Conditional logit estimation is used to estimate the probability that the firms will match in mergers and spinoffs. We calculate several...

Why do firms use continuations in the prosecution of their patents? Motivated by the widespread use of continuations by U.S. firms and the prominence of this procedure in U.S. patent policy debates, we investigate the influence of corporate and patent characteristics on the use of continuations....

Few micro-level empirical papers have addressed the impact of the patent system on industry structure. Using firm-level patent data for public and private firms in plant biotechnology, we develop a measure of patent enforceability. Duration models show that patent statistics are a useful...

Many recent empirical studies have examined the effect of the patent system on R&D, innovation and patenting behavior. However, few micro-level empirical papers have addressed the impact of the patent system on industry structure. In this paper we build on our previous work to investigate merger...