This paper investigates how competition for scarce corporate resources impacts innovation incentives within multidivisional firms and, consequently, shapes firms’ preferences for fostering or restricting intra-firm competition. In our model, divisions become privately informed about the potential value of new investment opportunities generated through their innovation initiatives. We demonstrate that intra-firm competition unambiguously reduces divisions’ ex ante innovation incentives. However, it benefits ex post resource allocation by enabling the firm to (i) select the most promising project and (ii) limit the rents divisions earn from their private information. Consequently, a firm’s preference to limit or encourage interdivisional competition hinges on balancing ex post allocative efficiency, which favors increased intra-firm competition, against ex ante innovation incentives, which favor reduced competition. Our analysis identifies plausible conditions under which each organizational design—competitive or exclusive innovation—emerges as the optimal choice

We develop a real options model in which an entrepreneur facing ambiguity makes optimal investment and financing decisions for an innovation project. We introduce jumps in innovation returns and model investors’ aversion to ambiguity in both diffusion and jump risks. Debt accelerates investment by lowering the threshold and shortening expected waiting time, thereby increasing project value. This effect strengthens under greater ambiguity, offering a novel rationale for why debt—not equity—fosters innovation. Our results provide a coherent explanation for recent empirical findings on debt’s role in innovation and contribute to the broader literature on investment under uncertainty

The study investigates the impact of collective empathy on corporate green innovation from the perspective of war heritage. Drawing on stakeholder theory and empathy theory, we argue that collective empathy fosters corporate green innovation by generating public emotional empathy toward local descendants of war victims and enhance cognitive empathy within firms regarding the environmental needs of local communities. Analyzing data from Chinese-listed firms in heavily polluting industries between 2010 and 2019, we find that collective empathy significantly encourages green innovation efforts. Mechanism analyses indicate that collective emotional and cognitive empathy serve as key pathways in this relationship. Furthermore, state-owned ownership and formal institutions reinforce and complement the positive effect of collective empathy on corporate green innovation

We offer new evidence on the relationship between competition and innovation that overcomes two measurement difficulties compromising the extant literature: aggregation at either firm level (or higher) of innovative activity, and the mediating influence of distance-to-technological-frontier. FDA awards of Breakthrough Therapy Designations (BTDs) on specific drugs, instrument stochastic unleveling of therapeutic (ie, product) markets. Rivals’ innovative responses generally show an inverted-U pattern in ex ante competitiveness of the shocked market. However, the shape of the relation changes with distance to technological frontier in that market, proxied by whether the rival project uses one of the technologies embedded in the BTD-awarded drug

Using the case of the pogroms that took place in the historical region of the 'Pale of Settlement' in Eastern Europe, this paper analyzes the cultural legacy of ethnic violence and its long-term economic impact on access to finance and on corporate innovation. We find that firms in regions with a higher historical intensity of ethnic persecution face greater financial constraints, relying more on internal finance and experiencing reduced access to external finance. These financial limitations are linked to sluggish innovation activities among present-day firms. We propose that a mechanism of financial antipathy, rooted in a persistent anti-market culture fostered by historical ethnic animosity, explains these effects and reflects a long-term degradation of local social capital. Our results are supported by causal evidence using instrumental variables based on the precursors of historical inter-ethnic violence. The animosity and discrimination against the minority group appear to transfer to the broader economic activities in which that group was involved, creating lasting economic consequences for the majority population – consequences that continue to affect financial development and innovation to the present day

How do innovation and education policy affect individual career choices and aggregate productivity? This paper analyses the effect of R&D subsidies and higher education policy on productivity growth through the supply of innovative talent. We put scarce talent, higher education attainment, and career choice at the centre of a new endogenous growth framework with individual-level heterogeneity in talent, financial resources, and preferences. We link the model to micro-level data from Denmark on the backgrounds of who obtains a PhD and becomes an inventor and the outcomes of a set of policy interventions. We find that R&D subsidies can be strengthened when combined with higher education subsidies, which enable talented but poor youth to pursue a career in research. Education and innovation policies not only alleviate different frictions, but also impact innovation at different time horizons. Education policy is more effective in societies with higher income inequality

This study investigates the impact of banking market deregulation on firm innovation, focusing on foreign bank entry. Exploiting the staggered deregulation of China’s banking sector to foreign banks following its accession to the World Trade Organization, we find a significant positive relationship between foreign bank entry and firm innovation. We further show that foreign bank entry could promote firm innovation directly by providing more and higher-quality banking services to customers, and indirectly by inducing domestic banks to extend more credit to firms with more soft information, enhancing their capacity to support innovative firms, and generating technology spillovers through an increased presence of foreign-invested firms

Using hand-collected data from Form Ds on executives in venture capital (VC)-backed private firms, I show that VC-driven top management changes lead to a significantly greater quantity and quality of innovation, which potentially occurs through new management teams hiring more and higher quality inventors. My evidence demonstrates that both founder replacements and non-founder management changes are associated with enhanced innovation. Further, adding top managers with general managerial skills enhances innovation, whereas changing managers with a prior technical background does not. Finally, top management changes lead to the adoption of an exploitative (rather than explorative) innovation search strategy by private firms

This paper investigates how the regulation of bank wealth management products (WMPs) affects corporate innovation. We build a concise model linking firms’ assets allocation decisions to regulatory variables affecting banks. The model suggests that current WMP regulation can enhance formal lending and stimulate innovation among state-owned enterprises (SOEs), while having no impact on innovation in private enterprises (PEs). Empirically, we identify firms’ exposure to bank regulation by examining the number of WMPs issued by banks in 2017 and the distance between banks and firms. Our results indicate that innovation output significantly increased for highly exposed SOEs, while there was no significant change for PEs. Using city-level data, we further observe that regulation fosters innovation in regions with higher exposure. Our findings suggest that regulation exerts heterogeneous effects on the real economy by banks’ credit allocation and firms’ investment strategies

This paper revisits one of the rare success stories in global environmental cooperation: the Montreal Protocol and the phase-out of ozone-depleting substances. I show that the protocol increased science and innovation on alternatives to ozone-depleting substances and argue that agreements can indeed be useful in solving global public goods problems. This contrasts with game-theoretical predictions that agreements occur only when costs to the players are low and with the often-heard narrative that substitutes were readily available. I reconcile theory and empirics by discussing the role of induced innovation in models of environmental agreements