We use daily administrative data from a leading automobile manufacturer to study the organizational impacts of introducing new models to the auto assembly line. We first show that costly defects per vehicle spike when new models are introduced. As a response, the firm trains in problem-solving...

Understanding factors affecting the direction of innovation is a central aim of research in the economics of innovation. Progress on this topic has been inhibited by difficulties in measuring distance and movement in knowledge space. We describe a methodology that infers the mapping of the...

Empirical studies have found that enhanced foreign competition can encourage or discourage innovation. To address this relationship, I examine a market structure in which a small number of large multi-product oligopolists compete with a large number of small single-product firms in the same...

We evaluate the introduction of direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapy for Hepatitis C (HCV) on liver transplant allocation in the United States. We develop a model of listing and organ acceptance behavior for patients with both HCV-positive and HCV-negative end-stage liver disease. In the model,...

We document that monetary policy has a substantial impact on innovation activities. After a tightening shock of 100 basis points, research and development (R&D) spending declines by about 1 to 3 percent and venture capital (VC) investment declines by about 25 percent in the following 1 to 3...

We study the impact of techies--engineers and other technically trained workers--on firm-level productivity. We first report new facts on the role of techies in the firm by using French administrative data and unique surveys. Techies are STEM-skill intensive and are associated with innovation,...

It is more than 25 years since the authors of the Yale and Carnegie surveys studied how firms seek to protect the rents from innovation. In this paper, we revisit that question using a nationally representative sample of firms over the period 2008-2015, with the goal of updating and extending a...

How are inventors allocated in the US economy and does that allocation affect innovative capacity? To answer these questions, we first build a model of creative destruction where an inventor with a new idea has the possibility to work for an entrant or incumbent firm. If the inventor works for...

We study the global innovation and diffusion of ideas by introducing trade into the model in Eaton and Kortum (1999) (EK). This extension allows us to use international trade flows and country-level factor costs to estimate both the intensity of innovation within countries over time and...

This paper introduces a newly digitized, open-access version of the Food and Drug Administration's "Orange Book"--a linkage between approved small-molecule drugs and the patents that protect them. The Orange Book also reports any applicable regulatory exclusivity that prevents competitive entry....