Capturing Economic Value from Innovation Investments

Empirical analysis of a sample of companies with private equity (PE) ownership in the UK shows that PE firms act as deep-pocket investors for their portfolio companies, rescuing them if they fall in financial distress. Read More

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are an emerging form of fundraising for Blockchain-based startups. We propose a simple model of matching supply with demand with ICOs by companies involved in production of physical products. Read More

We develop a general-equilibrium asset-pricing model with dynamic games of price competition. Price war risks arise endogenously from declines in long-run growth as firms’ incentive to undercut prices grows stronger with a worse growth outlook. Read More

In markets where consumers seek expert advice regarding purchases, firms seek to influence experts, raising concerns about biased advice. We combine a model of supply and demand with a local instrumental variables strategy based on regional spillovers from academic medical center conflict-of-interest policies. Read More

This paper addresses the recent trend of offering unlimited vacation to employees. While potentially useful for acquiring human capital benefits, unlimited vacation is a risky perk for firms due to the possibility of abuse. Read More

Commuting is costly for employees, but is it costly for employers in terms of lost productivity? We study the causal effects of commuting distance on inventor productivity. Specifically, we estimate how inventor productivity changes when their employer relocates. Read More

Renewables have become the cheapest energy sources in most of the world but their generation remains variable and difficult to predict. However, recent technology advances have rendered large-scale electricity storage economically viable, thus mitigating the renewable intermittency issue and enabling combinations of e.g. wind and batteries to replace fossil fuel power plants. Read More

Firms tend to compete on prices more aggressively when they are in financial distress; the intensified competition in turn reduces firms’ profit margins, pushing them further into distress. Competitors’ aggressive pricing reactions could be attributed to both predatory and self-defensive incentives. Read More

The idea that source code for computer software be accessible to anyone has gained increasing popularity among software developers, fueling the rapid growth of the open source software (OSS) movement. Platforms for OSS development currently host incredibly valuable projects like the Linux kernel, TensorFlow and various blockchain software projects. Read More

We examine how wealth windfalls affect self-employment decisions using data on cash payments from claims on Texas shale drilling to people throughout the United States. Individuals who receive large wealth shocks (greater than $50,000) have 51% higher self-employment rates. Read More