Using a text-based metric of firms' ex-ante exposure to cybersecurity risk, we document that the rise of cyber threats is redesigning corporate innovation and appropriation strategies. As firms' exposure to cybersecurity risk increases, managers' reliance on trade secrets declines, as they seek to protect their firms' intellectual capital under the umbrella provided by patent and intellectual property laws. In particular, we document that firms exposed to cyber threats file for simpler patents to accelerate their innovation cycle. This strategic adjustment is not costless, as it causes firms' returns to research and development (R&D) investments to decline significantly.

By employing a novel, hand-collected sample of withdrawn and completed share issue privatizations, we show that both groups undergo comparable restructuring processes over the 3 years preceding the event. We employ matching procedures to explicitly control for the restructuring effect, isolating the effect of the ownership transfer from state to private investors on corporate policies and performance. We document that, absent the ownership transfer, most of the gains realized during the restructuring process are reabsorbed over the posttreatment period. The transition from state to private ownership thus represents a necessary condition for the long-term success of privatization programs.