This paper proposes a new measure of technological obsolescence using detailed patent data. The measure contains incremental information about firm innovation relative to measures focusing on new innovation. Using this measure, we present two sets of results. First, firms’ technological obsolescence foreshadows substantially lower growth, productivity, and reallocation of capital. This finding mainly applies to obsolescence of core innovation and embodied innovation, and it is stronger in competitive product markets. Second, in stock markets, high-obsolescence firms underperform low-obsolescence firms by 7% annually. Using analyst forecast data, we show this is due to a systematic overestimation of future profits of obsolescent firms.

This paper investigates why industrial firms conduct Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) investment in entrepreneurial companies. I test alternative views on CVC by exploiting the entry, investment, and termination decisions of CVC divisions. CVC entry concentrates in firms that experience deteriorations of internal innovation. At the investment stage, CVCs select startups with a similar technological focus but that have a non-overlapping knowledge base, and they integrate technologies generated from these ventures that create strategic value. CVCs are terminated when parent firms’ innovation recovers. Overall, the strategic desire to fix innovation weaknesses after adverse shocks motivates firms to adopt CVCs. Received November 15, 2017; editorial decision March 2, 2019 by Editor Francesca Cornelli. 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.

We explore indicators of market power in a data market. Markups cannot measure competition, because most data products’ marginal cost is zero, making the markup infinite. Yet, data monopolists may not exert monopoly power because they cannot commit to restricting data sales to future customers. This limited commitment and strategic substitutability of data undermine sellers’ monopoly power. But data subscriptions restore this monopoly power. Evidence from online data markets supports the model’s insight that subscriptions indicate market power. Model and evidence reveal that data subscriptions are better for consumers because they sustain the incentive to invest in high-quality data.

Across a broad range of equipment types and industries, we document a pattern of local capital reallocation from older firms to younger firms. Start-ups purchase a disproportionate share of old physical capital previously owned by more mature firms. The evidence is consistent with financial constraints driving differential demand for vintage capital. The local supply of used capital influences start-up entry, job creation, investment choices, and growth, particularly when capital is immobile. Meanwhile, as suppliers of used capital, incumbents accelerate capital replacement in the presence of younger firms. The evidence suggests previously undocumented benefits to co-location between old and young firms.

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the role of private equity (PE) in failed‐bank resolutions after the 2008 financial crisis, using proprietary Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation failed‐bank acquisition data. PE investors made substantial investments in underperforming and riskier failed banks, particularly in geographies where local banks were also distressed, filling the gap created by a weak, undercapitalized banking sector. Using a quasi‐random empirical design based on detailed bidding information, we show that PE‐acquired banks performed better ex post, with positive real effects for the local economy. Overall, PE investors played a positive role in stabilizing the financial system through their involvement in failed‐bank resolution.

ABSTRACT Persuasive communication functions through not only content but also delivery—facial expression, tone of voice, and diction. This paper examines the persuasiveness of delivery in startup pitches. Using machine learning algorithms to process full pitch videos, we quantify persuasion in visual, vocal, and verbal dimensions. We find that positive (i.e., passionate, warm) pitches increase funding probability. However, conditional on funding, startups with higher levels of pitch positivity underperform. Women are more heavily judged on delivery when evaluated in single‐gender teams, but they are neglected when copitching in mixed‐gender teams. Using an experiment, we show that persuasion delivery works mainly through leading investors to form inaccurate beliefs.

This paper studies how hedge fund activism impacts corporate innovation. Firms targeted by activists improve their innovation efficiency over the five-year period following hedge fund intervention. Despite a tightening in research and development (R&D) expenditures, target firms increase innovation output, as measured by both patent counts and citations, with stronger effects among firms with more diversified innovation portfolios. Reallocation of innovative resources, redeployment of human capital, and change to board-level expertise all contribute to improve target firms’ innovation. Additional tests help isolate the effect of intervention from alternative explanations, including mean reversion, sample attrition, voluntary reforms, or activist stock-picking.

This paper argues that incumbent firms may acquire innovative targets solely to discontinue the target’s innovation projects and preempt future competition. We call such acquisitions “killer acquisitions.” We develop a model illustrating this phenomenon. Using pharmaceutical industry data, we show that acquired drug projects are less likely to be developed when they overlap with the acquirer’s existing product portfolio, especially when the acquirer’s market power is large because of weak competition or distant patent expiration. Conservative estimates indicate that 5.3%–7.4% of acquisitions in our sample are killer acquisitions. These acquisitions disproportionately occur just below thresholds for antitrust scrutiny.

ABSTRACT New firms are an important source of job creation, but the underlying economic mechanisms for why this is so are not well understood. Using an identification strategy that links shocks to local income to job creation in the nontradable sector, we ask whether job creation arises more through new firm creation or through the expansion of existing firms. We find that new firms account for the bulk of net employment creation in response to local investment opportunities. We also find significant gross job creation and destruction by existing firms, suggesting that positive local shocks accelerate churn.