New perspectives on intellectual property rights: empirical evidence at the firm-level.

The economic literature in intellectual property rights (IPR) is vast, as IPR policies are often seen as among the main incentive schemes for innovation in the business sector, and thus also for economic growth and welfare gains. This project aims to contribute to the lively debate on IPRs and corresponding policies in three dimensions: (i) In the debate on the value of patents it is often argued that new patents result in a higher market value of the recipient firms. However, these studies generally do not control for the stock of inventor human capital. In this module we will disentangle the value of IPRs on inventions, from the firms’ human capital base, by making use of a novel perspective on how to measure firms’ inventor human capital. (ii) In a second module, of the project, we will investigate whether market power and brand reputation spill over from a firm’s product market to the market for technology. In particular, we will test whether firms that made brand-specific investments, in the form of trademarks, are able to achieve a price-premium in technology licensing deals. (iii) In the third module, we will investigate how exogenous uncertainty about IPRs causes economic hold-up by reducing subsequent investment in research (and especially) development. In order to model uncertainty, pending patent applications at the firm-level will be used.