U.S. research has found that unionization adversely affects research and development investment, consistent with the view that labor unions' rent-seeking activities act as a tax on innovation. In this U.K. study, preliminary analysis of two datasets (a cross-section of plants and a company panel...

We find that institutional ownership in publicly traded companies is associated with more innovation (measured by cite-weighted patents). To explore the mechanism through which this link arises, we build a model that nests the lazy-manager hypothesis with career-concerns, where institutional...

When investing in research and development (R&D), institutions must decide whether to take a top-down approach – soliciting a particular technology – or a bottom-up approach in which innovators suggest ideas. This paper examines a reform to the U.S. Air Force Small Business Innovation...

Organizations investing in R&D must decide whether to solicit specific technologies or allow innovators to suggest ideas. Using administrative data, we study the “Open” reform to U.S. Air Force R&D procurement, which invited firms to suggest any new potentially useful technology. The new...

National industrial concentration in the U.S. has risen sharply since the early 1980s, but there remains dispute over whether local geographic concentration has followed a similar trend. Using near population data from the Economic Censuses, we confirm and extend existing evidence on national...

Economists have long puzzled over the astounding differences in productivity between firms and countries. For example, looking at disaggregated data on U.S. manufacturing industries, Syverson (2004a) found that plants at the 90th percentile produced four times as much as the plant in the 10th...

Support for many Ramp;D and technology policies relies on empirical evidence that Ramp;D quot;spills overquot; between firms. But there are two countervailing Ramp;D spillovers: positive effects from technology spillovers and negative effects from business stealing by product market rivals. We...

Despite competition concerns over the increasing dominance of global corporations, many argue that productivity spillovers from multinationals to domestic firms justify pro-FDI policies. For the first time, we use firm-to-firm transaction data in a developed country to examine the impact of...

Despite competition concerns over the increasing dominance of global corporations, many argue that productivity spillovers from multinationals to domestic firms justify pro- FDI policies. For the first time, we use firm-to-firm transaction data in a developed country to examine the impact of...