The origins of financial innovations have attracted little empirical scrutiny. Using Wall Street Journal articles as an indicator, this paper examines which institutions were the key financial innovators between 1990 and 2002. The evidence suggests that smaller firms account for a disproportionate share of the innovations. Less profitable firms innovate more, though in the years subsequent to the introduction of the innovation, the profitability of the innovators increases significantly. Finally, older, less leveraged firms located in regions with more financial innovations innovate more. While several of the determinants of patenting are similar, small and unprofitable firms do not patent disproportionately.

Owners of intellectual property or mere sponsors of an idea (e.g., authors, security issuers, sponsors of standards) resort to more or less independent certifiers to persuade potential users (buyers or adopters) of the worth of their property or idea. We analyze the sponsor's choices of certifier and design, social preferences regarding these choices, and the impacts thereon of multiple categories of users, of a downstream presence of the sponsor, and of certifier market power. Finally, we study strategic forum shopping by sponsors of competing ideas.

There are substantial differences between open-source projects and traditional innovative efforts in private firms. Private firms usually pay their workers, direct and manage their efforts, and control the output and intellectual property created. In an open-source project, however, a body of original material is made publicly available for others to use, under certain conditions. Contributions to open-source projects are made by a diverse array of individual contributors, and for-profit corporations, who must often agree to make enhancements to the original material widely available for nominal cost. This paper empirically examines the dynamics of contributions to open-source software projects. We show that the share of corporate contributions in a sample of approximately 100 open-source projects between 2001 and 2004 is greater in larger and growing projects.