We study the effect of a firm winning an additional H-1B visa on the firm’s outcomes, by comparing winning and losing firms in the Fiscal Year 2006 and 2007 H-1B visa lotteries. We match administrative data on the participants in these lotteries to the universe of approved U.S. patents, and to...

This paper is an exercise in comparative institutional analysis, asking what kinds of arrangements most facilitate innovation. After identifying pervasive market failures in innovation, it explains why those associated with the Nordic model may be particularly conducive to innovation, and...

The pace of innovation is related both to the level of investment in innovation and the pool of knowledge from which innovators can draw. Both of these are endogenous: Investments in innovations are affected by the pool of knowledge and the ability of firms to appropriate the returns to their...

The continuations procedure within the U.S. patent system has been criticized for enabling firms to manipulate the patent review process for strategic purposes. Changes during the 1990s in patent procedures affected the incentives of applicants to exploit the continuations process, and...

We use detailed information about wages, education and occupations to shed light on the evolution of the U.S. financial sector over the past century. We uncover a set of new, interrelated stylized facts: financial jobs were relatively skill intensive, complex, and highly paid until the 1930s and...

We examine the impact of individual-level motives upon innovative effort and performance in firms. Drawing from economics and social psychology, we develop a model of the impact of individuals' motives and incentives upon their innovative effort and performance. Using data on over 11,000...

A great deal of research has been devoted to the effects of technical change on economic growth. Less attention has been given to the factors driving the growth of the technological innovators themselves. This paper examines the case of one of the central contributors to the IT revolution, the...

This paper is an attempt to assess the existence and magnitude of local research spillovers in France. We rely on the model of an extended production function (Cobb-Douglas and Translog) with both local and neighborhood R&D capital stocks. We estimate this model on 312 employment areas as of...

Purchasing power parities (PPPs) for R&D expenditure in 19 manufacturing industries are developed for France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom relative to the United States for the years 1997 and 1987. These PPPs are based on R&D input prices for specific cost categories...