On numerous occasions, rival firms seek to market goods together, particularly in high-technology industries. This paper empirically examines one such institution: the patent pool. The analysis highlights five findings consistent with the theoretical predictions: (a) pools involving substitute...

This paper employs a novel data set on lobbying expenditures to measure the degree of within-sector political organization and to explore the determinants of the mode of lobbying and political organization across U.S. industries. The data show that sectors characterized by a higher degree of...

When startup innovation involves a potentially disruptive technology - initially lagging in the predominant performance metric, but with a potentially favorable trajectory of improvement - incumbents may be wary of engaging in cooperative commercialization with the startup. While the prevailing...

The banking literature has established that banks can alleviate information asymmetries between lenders and borrowers, while the Q literature has used cash flow sensitivity analysis to test whether financing constraints hinder investment. This paper investigates whether bank ties in Japan were...

We organized business associations for the owner-managers of randomly selected young Chinese firms to study the effect of business networks on firm performance. We randomized 2,800 firms into small groups whose managers held monthly meetings for one year, and into a “no- meetings” control...

Foreign-owned firms from advanced countries carry the culture of transparency in business transactions that is orthogonal to the culture of hiding and insider dealing in many developing economies and economies in transition. In this paper, we document this using administrative data on reported...

Members of a patent pool agree to use a set of patents as if they were jointly owned by all members and license them as a package to other firms. Regulators favor pools as a means to encourage innovation: Pools are expected to reduce litigation risks for their members and lower license fees and...

This paper examines the importance of learning-by-doing that is specific not just to individual firms, but to pairs of firms working together in a contracting relationship. Using new, detailed data from the oil and gas industry, I find that the joint productivity of an oil production company and...

Research on intellectual property has focused on formal legally recorded rights that we call deeded, most often measured by granted patents. Meanwhile, other "defacto" IP (mainly purposive secrecy and natural excludability) has become more important because of the increasing closeness of...

We empirically examine the effects of industry consortia on the coordination of innovation strategies of the members. Our analyses utilize membership data from 32 consortia in wireless telecommunication technology subfields from 2000 to 2005 and prior art citations in standards-essential...