Innovations and profits

Efficient Division of Profits from Complementary Innovations

Many products—including microprocessors, telecommunications devices, and online auction services—make use of multiple technologies, each of which is essential to make or sell the product. This paper examines how alternative intellectual property regimes and legal institutions affect investment in the R&D necessary to develop these complex technologies. We posit several reasonable properties for...

Profits, Layoffs and Priorities

This study examines the deliberations of professional MBA students when presented with a dilemma that weighs the difference between commitments to profit maximization against concerns for fired workers who would need to seek a new job during a recession. Using content analysis, we categorize accounting, economic and ethically-based rationales that differ from the profitmaximizing recommendation...

Profits and Productivity

In this study we consider the linkage between productivity change and profit change. We develop an analytical framework in which profit change between one period and the next is decomposed into three sources: (i) a productivity change effect (which includes a technical change effect and an operating efficiency effect), (ii) an activity effect (which includes a product mix effect, a resource mix...

Profits and professionalism.

Momentum Profits and Macroeconomic Risk

Previous work shows that the growth rate of industrial production is a common macroeconomic risk factor in the cross-section of expected returns. We demonstrate the connection between momentum profits and shifts in factor loadings on this macroeconomic variable. Winners have temporarily higher loadings on the growth rate of industrial production than losers. The loading dispersion derives mostl...