The fundamental importance of economic institutions for economic growth through their impact on technological change has long been argued by Joseph Schumpter and others. Recent empirical studies have reconfirmed such arguments. Robert Barro (1997) finds that economic and political institutions are the most important factors in explaining differences in growth across economies. New growth theory has made major breakthroughs in endogenizing technological changes. However, although some insightful and inspiring discussions of institutional impacts of innovation are provided, there is little attempt in these models to explain what, aside from capital, labor inputs, and knowledge accumulation, determines innovation. An attempt is made to fill the gap in literature by examining how financial institutions affect technological innovation and thus affect growth

This study examines how the design of incentive contracts for tasks defined as workers' official responsibilities (i.e., standard tasks) influences workers' propensity to engage in employee‐initiated innovation (EII). EII corresponds to innovation activities that are not formally assigned to workers but are nonetheless encouraged and considered to be important for the company's success. Like other extra‐role behaviors, EII is difficult to incentivize directly. Therefore, it is important to understand whether and how explicit incentive contracts designed for the workers' standard tasks may indirectly influence their EII activity. We use field data from a manufacturing company that uses a dedicated information system to track workers' EII idea submissions. We find theory‐consistent evidence that, compared to workers receiving fixed pay, employees rewarded for their standard tasks with variable compensation contracts exhibit a lower propensity to engage in EII. This result is concentrated among ideas benefiting other constituents and activities beyond the proponents' standard task (i.e., broad‐scope ideas). In contrast, we find no difference attributable to standard task incentive design in the proposal of innovation ideas narrowly focused on the proponent's standard task (i.e., narrow‐scope ideas). Our findings suggest that variable pay narrows employees' conceptual focus around the standard task and hinders employee engagement in broad‐scope innovation activities compared to fixed compensation contracts. We contribute to the literature on incentives for innovation by showing that standard task compensation contracts have spillover effects on EII behavior. We also contribute to the nascent literature on EII by showing that innovation types , defined based on their relation with the proponent's standard task, matter. Our results are relevant for practitioners in that managers relying on variable pay contracts to incentivize standard task performance should expect lower employee engagement in broad‐scope EII

A model is proposed for analyzing the financing of highly innovative projects undertaken by an investor and an entrepreneur as partners. It is shown that the optimal contract rewards the entrepreneur for success and failure but penalizes him for moderate returns. This theoretical scheme can be implemented by a hybrid financial structure that combines inside and outside equity and that is subsequently balanced by means of a reassignment mechanism contingent upon the project’s returns. Two settings are compared, one in which either of the partners innovates but not both (single moral hazard) and another in which both partners do (double moral hazard). We show that which setting is best depends on the degree of technological dependence between the partners’ innovation processes. This may explain the coexistence in practice of different financing and partnership arrangements

We examine the inducement effect of labor cost on corporate innovation in emerging markets. To establish causality, we adopt a difference-in-differences approach, based on the variations generated by the passage of the new Labor Contract Law in China, as well as an instrumental variable approach. We find the inducement effect of labor cost is more pronounced for Chinese non-state-owned enterprises, firms without political connections, and firms with low labor productivity. Our results support the induced innovation hypothesis in that increases in wages will induce invention and technology adoption, but also suggest that government intervention through state ownership and political connections largely decreases this inducement effect. Our findings have implications for emerging markets regarding the transition from a low-cost labor development model to an innovation-driven growth model

Regularities concerning how entry, exit, market structure, and innovation vary from the birth of technologically progressive industries through maturity are summarized. A model emphasizing differences in firm innovative capabilities and the importance of firm size in appropriating the returns from innovation is developed to explain the regularities. The model also explains regularities regarding the relationship within industries between firm size and firm innovative effort, innovative productivity, cost, and profitability. It predicts that over time firms devote more effort to process innovation but the number of firms and the rate and diversity of product innovation eventually wither

Regularities concerning how entry, exit, market structure, and innovation vary from the birth of technologically progressive industries through maturity are summarized. A model emphasizing differences in firm innovative capabilities and the importance of firm size in appropriating the returns from innovation is developed to explain the regularities. The model also explains regularities regarding the relationship within industries between firm size and firm innovative effort, innovative productivity, cost, and profitability. It predicts that over time firms devote more effort to process innovation but the number of firms and the rate and diversity of product innovation eventually wither

Prior research suggests that executive option grants that do not quickly vest provide managers with better incentives to pursue long-term, instead of short-term, objectives. Previous research also suggests that the pursuit of long-term objectives could be undermined by the risk of early termination. We conjecture that these arguments jointly suggest that managers are better motivated to pursue innovation when they are given more incentive compensation with longer vesting periods for unexercised options and yet some protection from disruptive takeover threats. Our evidence for a sample of newly public firms is consistent with more innovative firms jointly choosing such a combination

This paper shows that in a frictional labour market part of the productivity gains from general training will be captured by future employers. As a result, investments in general skills will be suboptimally low, and contrary to the standard theory, part of the costs may be borne by the employers. The paper also demonstrates that the interaction between innovation and training leads to an amplification of this inefficiency and to a multiplicity of equilibria. Workers are more willing to invest in their skills by accepting lower wages today if they expect more firms to innovate and pay them higher wages in the future. Similarly, firms are more willing to innovate when they expect the quality of the future workforce to be higher, thus when workers invest more in their skills

[The choice of development period and consequent introduction time for a single innovation by an expected profit maximizing firm operating under conditions of rivalrous competition is studied. Factors taken into account by the firm are the increasing cost with compression of the development period, the reduction of profit opportunities with prolongation of the development period, and the probability of rival innovation and imitation which affect the potential rewards available to the firm. Comparisons is made with the timing that would be selected in the absence of rivalry. The effects of intense rivalry are also examined

We predict that entrepreneurs are more likely to have a long-term orientation to their decision making if they have male heirs, because traditionally sons, not daughters, have been expected to carry on the family business. Our results support this prediction. Specifically, we find that when entrepreneurs have at least one son, have more sons, and have a firstborn son, their firms are more innovative. The results are robust to a battery of robustness tests, including alternative measures of innovation, instrumental variable approach, and Heckman two-step correction for selection bias. Our further analyses show that the positive association between male heirs and firm innovation is stronger for entrepreneurs with a greater son preference and is weaker for entrepreneurs who more impacted by the one-child policy