I study how laws, markets, and other societal institutions affect firms' incentives to invest in R&D and disclose their inventions to the public. I further study how these institutions and their role in R&D affect the competitive environment in the respective industries. My main field of research is innovation economics. I am also interested in the law and economics of privacy, contracts, and litigation.

Publications (peer-reviewed)

Contact me for personal-use copies of my articles.

1. Learning When to Quit: An Empirical Model of Experimentation in Standards Development
   American Economic Journal: Microeconomics (forthcoming)
   with Timothy Simcoe and Emanuele Tarantino
   (NBER Working Paper 24358, CEPR Discussion Paper DP12733)
   


2. Representation is Not Sufficient for Selecting Gender Diversity
   Research Policy, 53(6), 2024, Article 104994
   with Justus Baron, Nicola Persico, Timothy Simcoe, and Emanuele Tarantino
   
   • Download: NBER, CEPR, SSRN, and ZEW (October 2023 version)
   • Nice summary by the Technology and Policy Research Initiative at Boston University.
   • "Do Diverse Hiring Committees Choose More Diverse Leaders?" (in KelloggInsight)
   • "ZEW Mannheim: Wie MINT-Berufe für Frauen attraktiv werden" (January 2, 2024, Mannheimer Morgen; German; paywall)


3. The Effect of Patent Litigation Insurance: Theory and Evidence from NPEs
   Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 38(3), 2022 (November), pp 741-773
   with Christian Helmers and Brian J. Love
   • Download June 2021 version
   • Download November 2018 version (presenting a different modeling approach to litigation)
   • Featured on IAM (November 22, 2018): "IP risk management goes mainstream and some see big bucks ahead"
     
   • Bloomberg Law article (June 25, 2020): "IP Insurers See Their Time as Now With Covid-19 In Background"


4. Markups for Consumers
   Journal of Economics and Statistics (Special Issue: Market Power and Concentration Developments), 241(5-6), 2021 (November), pp 701-734
   with Alex Kann and Ilona Tsanko
   
   • Replication files (on the ZBW Journal Data Archive)


5. Expectations of Reciprocity when Competitors Share Information: Experimental Evidence
   Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 170, 2020 (February), pp 244-267
   with Alex Holcomb and Noah Myung
   (Online Appendix)


6. Installment Contracts and Material Breach
   Supreme Court Economic Review, 26, 2018, pp 1-46 (lead article)
   


7. Efficient Material Breach of Contract
   Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 33(3), 2017 (August), pp 507-540
   (Slides, Online Appendix)


8. Adversarial Decision-Making: Choosing Between Models Constructed by Interested Parties
   Journal of Law and Economics, 59(3), 2016 (August), pp 527-548
   with Luke Froeb and Steven Tschantz
   (Slides, Online Appendix)


9. Conversation With Secrets
   RAND Journal of Economics, 45(2), 2014 (Summer), pp 273-302
   with Emanuele Tarantino


10. Patent Hold Up and Antitrust: How a Well-Intentioned Rule Could Retard Innovation
    Journal of Industrial Economics, 60(2), 2012 (June), pp 249-273
    with Luke Froeb and Greg Werden

Contributions to Edited Volumes and Special Issues

• Effective Regulation and Firm Compliance: The Case of German Privacy Policies
  In: Data Privacy Protection and the Conduct of Applied Research: Methods, Approaches and their Consequences, edited by Ruobin Gong, V. Joseph Hotz, and Ian M. Schmutte, University of Chicago Press, forthcoming
  with Jacopo Gambato and Julia Krämer
  • The working paper can be found on the NBER website


• Reproducibility in Management Science
  Management Science, 70(3), 2024 (March), pp 1343-2022
  Fišar, M., Greiner, B., Huber, C., Katok, E., Ozkes, A., and the Management Science Reproducibility Collaboration (Note: I am a contributor)
  
  • The working paper can be found at: https://osf.io/mydzv


• Technology Economics: Innovation, Licensing, and Antitrust
  In: Global Antitrust Institute Report on the Digital Economy, chapter 5, pp 192-219, November 2020
  with Greg Werden, Luke Froeb, and Steven Tschantz
  

Policy Reports

• Trusted Research and Innovation: How Knowledge Leakage Affects the Research & Innovation Ecosystem
  Innovation and Research Caucus, Oxford, UK (coming very soon)
  with Nicola Searle and Maurizio Borghi


• Verbraucherpreisaufschläge in Deutschland
  Report for the German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV), April 2021
  with Alexander Kann and Ilona Tsanko
  
  • Coverage: Spiegel (German), markenartikel (German), Neues Deutschland (German)
  • Summary of our results (in German), posted on the Inclusive Productivity Blog (by Bertelsmann Stiftung): "Wachsende Marktmacht in Deutschland: Schlecht für Produktivität und Verbraucher:innen"
  • For more information, in particular on sample construction and estimation details for price markups, see the background paper Markups for Consumers


• Price Markups, Innovation, and Productivity: Evidence from Germany
  Report for the Bertelsmann Stiftung, Gütersloh, Germany, July 2020
  with Nadine Hahn, Michael Hellwig, Alexander Kann, Bettina Peters, and Ilona Tsanko
  
  • Summary of our results (in German), posted on the Ökonomenstimme.org Blog: "Marktmacht und Produktivität der Unternehmen in Deutschland"
  • Link to the video of the presentation of our results at the OECD Global Forum on Productivity (December 3, 2020)

Working Papers (under review)

• Regulatory Compliance with Limited Enforceability: Evidence from Privacy Policies
  with Jacopo Gambato and Julia Krämer; latest version: July 2024
  • Find the paper on SSRN
  • Slides
  • 10-minute summary video, produced by Latest Thinking


• Do Judicial Assignments Matter? Evidence from Random Case Allocation
  with Christian Helmers and Brian J. Love; latest version: January 2024
  
  • Download: SSRN
  • Press coverage: New York Times (April 5, 2024; cited as "a 2024 study"), Texas Lawyer (April 30, 2024)


• Visibility of Technology and Cumulative Innovation: Evidence from Trade Secrets Laws
  with Imke Reimers; latest version: September 2024
  
  • Download at SSRN; Earlier version: CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper 119/2019
  • Slides

Other Working Papers

Contact me for the most recent version!

• Competition and the Strategic Disclosure of Innovation: Theory and Evidence from Patent Applications
  with David T. Angenendt; March 2025
  • CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper 664/2025


• User-Data Collection and Strategic Tracking Disclosure
  with Jacopo Gambato; latest version: September 2024


• Looking for Innovation Beyond the Patent System: Evidence from Research Disclosures
  with Alexander Kann; latest version: July 2024
  • CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper 656/2025


• Soft-Landing Contract and Temporal Incompleteness
  with Julian Klix and Dongsoo Shin; latest version: March 2024


• Equilibrium Effects of the Availability of Injunctions in Standard-Essential Patent Licensing
  with Benno Buehler and Dominik Fischer; latest version: September 2023
  
  • Find the paper on SSRN


• The Rise of Process Claims: Evidence from a Century of U.S. Patents
  with W. Keith Robinson and Michael Seeligson; April 2022
  • Summary of our main findings
  • Find the paper on SSRN
  • Find the data on Zenodo
  • Check out our data page for more information


• Complexity, Standardization, and the Design of Loan Agreements
  with Malcolm Wardlaw; April 2017

Work in Progress

• Networks and Power: Gender Effects of Random Selection Into an Administrative Elite
• Do Commonly Held Firms Coordinate Their R&D? Evidence from Patents
• Mergers and the Direction of Corporate Innovation
• R&D Tax Credits and Directed Technological Change
• Green Innovation: The Trade Secrets Gap
• Commercial Motives for Standards Development: Evidence from Alice v. CLS Bank

Permanent Working Papers

• Separation of Legal Power: The Case of Antitrust (March 2011)
  with Andrea Günster
• Intrinsic Motivation, Discrimination and the Child Labor-Schooling Trade-Off (December 2006)

Last changed: March 10, 2025