Intellectual Property Rights and Debt Financing
利用美国联邦巡回法院加强企业员工专利权的裁决，研究发现企业债务比率和研发支出分别增加18%和9%，且事前敲竹杠风险高时效果更显著。
Abstract I examine how the investment and financing of innovation are affected by the contractual allocation of intellectual property rights using a Federal Circuit ruling that strengthened firms’ property rights to employee patents. I find that treatment firms’ total debt-to-assets ratio and R&D spending increase by 18% and 9%, respectively, as the residual control over patents increases firms’ incentives to innovate. These effects are more pronounced when ex ante holdup exposure is high. Furthermore, I find a positive marginal effect of asset complementarity as it limits the decline in employee incentives. Consistently, I show that firms’ ex post asset complementarity improves. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.