The division of Germany into a free-market West and a socialist East that followed the military defeat in spring 1945 induced thousands of East German companies to relocate to the West in the following years. This exogenous mass exodus allows us to identify the motives for the choice of firm...

This paper analyzes the consequences of radical patent-regime change by exploiting a natural experiment: the forced adoption of the Prussian patent system in territories annexed after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Compared to other German states, Prussia granted patents more restrictively by...

This paper studies the impact of radical institutional reform on innovation. We use the timing and geography of French invasions of different regions of Germany after the French revolution of 1789 as an exogenous shock to the institutions of those regions. German regions that were invaded by the...

This paper analyzes the consequences of radical patent-regime change by exploiting a natural experiment: the forced adoption of the Prussian patent system in territories annexed after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Compared to other German states, Prussia granted patents more restrictively by...