Working Papers
(With Daniel Spulber)
Simultaneously accounting for markets for technology and knowledge spillovers is important to correctly assess the socially optimal level of R&D. We create a new dataset on interactions in the market for technology and develop a new approach for estimating the relative importance of knowledge spillovers and markets for technology. [Full abstract]
(With Daniel Spulber)
We provide an analytical framework for identifying business creation and business stealing in the market for technology. We apply our approach to a new dataset that tracks interactions in the market for technology between publicly held US companies with at least one patent in the USPTO. [Full abstract]
We study the effect of pre-grant patent publication on the timing of transactions in the market for technology for two modes of exchange: licensing and patent transfers. In order to identify the effect of pre-grant publication we leverage the enactment of the American Inventor's Protection Act of 1999 (AIPA). To identify the causal effect of AIPA we implement a regression discontinuity design. Our main finding is that AIPA did not have any effect on the timing of transactions in the market for technology. Our findings reverse recent results in the literature. [Full abstract]
The profitability, user costs and fixed costs of R&D jointly interact to determine firms' decisions on whether or not to invest in R&D and how much to invest. Which one of these three key determinants is more important at explaining differences in R&D across countries? We combine macro-data on the intensive and extensive margins of R&D (country level) and micro-modeling (firm level) to answer this question for a cross-section of 28 European countries. [Full abstract]
Governments all around the globe have been setting R&D spending targets to promote economic growth. The systematic failure to meet such targets suggests that the fundamental drivers of R&D are not fully understood. Which policies would allow countries to achieve their R&D intensity targets? To answer this question we develop and estimate a structural model of firm R&D investment. [Full abstract]
Entrepreneurial innovation involves turning embryonic inventions into marketable innovations through costly technology development. Do venture capitalists (VCs) target their funding to technology development or do they support later stages of the innovation cycle involving mostly commercialization? To answer this question we merge a list of first-round venture capital (VC) investments with an innovation survey. [Full abstract]
Publications
(With R. Caratxo, J. Garcia-Quevedo and M. Mira-Godinho)
Research Policy, 45, 1858-1872, 2016.
We investigate whether royalty sharing arrangements have been effective in stimulating inventors’ efforts and in ultimately improving university outcomes in Portugal and Spain. [Full abstract]
(With Pierre Mohnen)
The Journal of Industrial Economics, Volume LXIII, 458-494, 2015.
Using firm‐level data on Spanish manufacturing firms we estimate a model of the firm's optimal R&D decisions (whether to perform R&D and how much to invest). We use the model to simulate the effects of trigger policies aimed at inducing entry into R&D activities. [Full abstract]
Review of Industrial Organization, 43(3), 193-220, 2013.
We study whether R&D subsidies can be used to encourage sustained R&D performance. To this end we measure the importance of true state dependence (TSD) in R&D performance and of subsidies’ inducement effects. Simulations show that subsidies can generate permanent inducement effects for 9 % of Spanish manufacturing firms. [Full abstract]
Research Policy, 41(5), 897-912, 2012.
We document that patent trajectories of venture capital backed firms follow an inverted U-shape over time. This empirical finding is consistent with venture capitalists investing in firms with promising inventions to turn such inventions into marketable products and then focus on commercialization. [Full abstract]