Current research
with S. Baruffaldi
We establish the importance of physical capital in knowledge production. Exploiting adverse events in research laboratories, we find that scientists experience a persistent reduction in research output if they lose specialized physical capital---equipment and material they created over time for a particular research purpose. In contrast, they recover in productivity if they only lose generic physical capital. Scientists in older laboratories, who presumably lose more obsolete physical capital, are more likely to change their research direction and recover. These findings suggest that scientists' investments into their own physical capital yield lasting returns but also create path dependence.
with F. Poege, K. Hoisl, D. Harhoff and D. Dorner
We examine how collaborator loss affects the individual productivity of knowledge workers in corporate R&D. Specifically, we argue that the effect of such loss depends on whether the lost collaborator was internal or external to the organization, which may have compensatory measures in place to maintain the continuity of R&D efforts. To empirically investigate the effect of internal and external collaborator loss, we leverage 845 unexpected deaths of active inventors. We find a substantial negative effect on inventive productivity for the loss of external collaborators, particularly when the collaborator was of presumably high relevance to the remaining inventor. In contrast, the effect for the loss of internal collaborators is virtually zero. We show that the organization's knowledge management and hiring capabilities are instrumental in explaining the muted effect of internal collaborator loss.
with D. Byrski, and M. J. Higgins
Prior literature has established a link between changes in market size and pharmaceutical innovation; whether a link exists with scientific research remains an open question. If upstream research is not responsive to these changes, the kinds of scientific discoveries that flow into future drug development could be disconnected from downstream demand. We explore this question by exploiting the effects of quasi-experimental variation in market size introduced by Medicare Part D. We find no causal relationship between market size and biomedical research in the decade following the implementation of Medicare Part D. While many factors have been shown to motivate scientists to conduct research, this result suggests that changes in market size provide no such incentive. We do find, however, limited support for a response by corporate scientists conducting applied research. Implications for pharmaceutical innovation policy are discussed.
with Y. Lefouili
This paper examines court selection by plaintiffs in patent litigation. We build a forum shopping model that provides a set of predictions regarding plaintiffs’ court preferences, and the way these preferences depend on the market proximity between the plaintiff and the defendant. Then, using a rich dataset of patent litigation at German regional courts between 2003 and 2008, we estimate the determinants of court selection with alternative-specific conditional logit models. In line with our theoretical predictions, our empirical results show that plaintiffs prefer courts that have shorter proceedings, especially when they compete against the defendants they face. Further, we find negative effects of the plaintiff’s, as well as the defendant’s, distance to court on the plaintiff’s court selection. Our empirical analysis also allows us to infer whether plaintiffs perceive a given court as more or less pro-patentee than another one.