How Do Inventors Respond to Financial Incentives? Evidence from Unanticipated Court Decisions on Employees’ Inventions in Japan
利用日本企业发明人的面板数据，研究发现法院强制企业基于发明商业成功提供激励后，高风险行业减少了高被引专利和科学基础专利的数量，表明此类激励可能扭曲研发效率。
We use a novel panel data set of corporate inventors matched with their employers in Japan to examine the effects of output-based financial incentives on corporate inventors’ performance. We exploit heterogeneous industry responses to Japanese court decisions that forced Japanese firms to introduce stronger incentives. We show, first, that only industries facing a high risk of employee-inventor lawsuits adopted or significantly strengthened financial incentives based on the commercial success of inventions in response to the court decisions. Our estimations reveal that stronger financial incentives in such industries reduced the number of highly cited patents and significantly decreased the incidence of science-based patents after technology-specific year effects are controlled for. These results show that the compulsion to remunerate employee-inventors on the basis of the commercial success of their inventions could distort the efficiency of corporate research and development and illustrate the importance of contracting freedom.