Technological Progress and Ownership Structure
57 Pages Posted: 27 Jan 2016
There are 2 versions of this paper
Patent Success, Patent Holdup, and the Structure of Property Rights
Date Written: January 2016
Abstract
Innovation processes under patent protection generate hold-up problems if complementary patents are owned by different firms. We show that in line with Hart and Moore (1990), shareholder ownership overlap across firms with patent complementarities helps mitigate such hold-up problems and correlates significantly with higher patent investment and more patent success as measured by future citations. The positive innovation effect is strongest for concentrated overlapping ownership and for the cases when the overlapping shareholders are dedicated investors.
Keywords: hold-up problems, innovation, institutional ownership, patents
JEL Classification: G31, G32, L22
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Swiss Finance Institute
Switzerland
CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)
Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany