We develop a theory of innovation for entry and sale into oligopoly, and show that an invention of higher quality is more likely to be sold (or licensed) to an incumbent due to strategic product market effects on the sales price. Preemptive acquisitions by incumbents are shown to stimulate the...

Exit of venture-backed firms often takes place through sales to large incumbent firms. We show that in such an environment, venture-backed firms have a stronger incentive to develop basic innovations into commercialized innovations than incumbent firms, due to strategic product market effects....

We study the effects of managerial practices in schools on students' outcomes. We measure managerial practices using the World Management Survey, a methodology that enables us to construct robust measures of management quality comparable across countries. We find substantial heterogeneity in...

Prior research, primarily based on lab experiments, suggests that females might be more averse to competition than males and could be more inclined towards collaboration, instead. Were these findings to generalize to adults across the workforce, there could be profound implications for...

To stay on top of global competition, firms and governments often need to acquire innovative goods and services, including ideas and research, from their strategic suppliers. A careful design of procurement policy is crucial to make potential suppliers generate and sell the most suitable...

This paper studies the role of intrinsic motivation, reputation and reciprocity in driving open source software innovation. We exploit the observed pattern of contributions - the 'revealed preference' of developers - to infer the underlying incentives. Using detailed information on code...

Health insurers often tie payments to providers' quality of care. Although payers do this to elicit more effort from providers, some providers may game the system by avoiding patients who would cause their quality scores to fall. We use annual variation in the criteria for Medicare's Quality...

We present several empirical facts about trends in marketing investment in the US. We also present estimates of the private value of brands to firms and aggregate intangible brand capital stocks created by these investments. These investments include the creation and maintenance of a brand name...

We document the presence of multiple and varied constraints to small and medium firm growth. This presents both a practical problem for business training programs and a challenge to academic economists trying to identify mechanisms though which these programs may affect outcomes. External...

The uniform pricing puzzle for vertically differentiated products states that a monopolist sells high and low quality products at the same price despite the fact that quality is perfectly observable and that there are no significant costs of adjusting prices. The puzzle is relevant for movies,...