The Impact of Intellectual Property Rights on Commercialization of University Research

Abstract : One of the foundational assumptions of patent law is that imbuing inventions with intellectual property rights (IPR) is necessary to bring forth innovation. We test this foundational assumption by examining the impact of IPR on commercialization of university research. Using the full set of US public firms who patented and conducted research over the period 1976 to 2007, we find little evidence that university research protected by IPR had higher commercialization relative to university research in the public domain. Indeed, if anything, university research in the public domain appears to have slightly greater commercialization.

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Do Pirated Video Streams Crowd out Non-pirated Video Streams? Evidence from Online Activity

Abstract : Does watching more pirated streaming video mean spending less time watching non-pirated streaming video? This study measures whether, and how much, time spent watching pirated video crowds out time spent on streaming video apps. While prior studies have estimated the impact of piracy on sales revenues, our study measures the impact of piracy on time spent on free and paid streaming apps. We combine big data tools with standard econometric techniques, including a two-stage least squares model, to analyze 5.25 terabytes of online activity data from 19,764 American households and their 468,612 devices from 2016 to 2017. The analysis suggests that every minute spent engaged with pirated video sites crowded out about 3.5 minutes of time spent streaming video. Because pirated video files are generally more compressed than non-pirated video files and because they are frequently downloaded as entire files rather than streamed, as with non-pirate sites like Netflix and Amazon, we conclude that our results exhibit closer to a 1-to-1 crowding out effect of piracy on over-the-top streaming video services.

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Employment and Productivity Effects of Tax Haven Fdi

Abstract : I use longitudinal data on more than 300,000 Ukrainian firms over the period 1999-2013, including more than 10,000 acquisitions by foreign investors, to study the extent to which tax haven ownership, compared with other sources of FDI, affects employment and firm productivity in the post-acquisition period. Controlling for a rich set of fixed effects and employing propensity score matching, I find that firms acquired by foreign investors experience on average boost employment 8-30 percent, labor productivity 10-16 percent and total factor productivity of 9-11percent relative to firms that stay domestic. The gap is much lower for firms acquired by investors from tax haven countries: using the most conservative specification that controls for firm specific fixed effects and growth trajectories, my results suggest that tax haven acquisitions leave employment unchanged, while productivity improvement is only 4-5 percent. My results suggest much that foreign investment from tax havens has lower effect on firm performance compared to effects of FDI from other foreign countries.

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