Firing Costs and Inventor Turnover

Nursing Turnover : Costs , Causes , & Solutions

On the Welfare Implications of Firing Costs

This paper derives a model in which workers have firm-specific and industry-specific skills, and in each period there is a non-zero probability that a worker quits. The quitting probability makes the private discount rate (used by firms in making decisions about firing workers) higher than the social discount rate. This generates a “quitting externality”, where firms lay off too many workers in...

The Individual Inventor

Inventor CEOs and Corporate Innovation

One in four U.S. high-tech firms are led by CEOs with hands-on innovation experience as inventors. We show that these “Inventor CEOs” stimulate higher quality firm-level innovation, especially when they have a personal history of high-impact patents. A CEO’s technology-class specific inventor experience also predicts the technology classes in which a firm has its greatest innovation success. Ut...

Absorptive Capacity and Post-Acquisition Inventor Productivity

Inventors often experience a low productivity after their company has been subject to a merger or acquisition (M&As). It is of central managerial interest to identify factors facilitating the integration of new inventive staff and thereby counteracting innovation declines after M&As. This paper provides empirical evidence into the role of acquiring firms’ absorptive capacity for the post-merger...