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.

• 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 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"


• 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)


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


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


• 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)


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


• 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

• 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)


• 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

• 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)

• Learning When to Quit: An Empirical Model of Experimentation in Standards Development
  with Timothy Simcoe and Emanuele Tarantino; September 2018
  Revise & resubmit, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics
  (Slides, NBER Working Paper 24358, CEPR Discussion Paper DP12733)
  


• Visibility of Technology and Cumulative Innovation: Evidence from Trade Secrets Laws
  with Imke Reimers; latest version: February 2022
  
  • Download at SSRN; Earlier version: CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper 119/2019
  • Slides


• Representation is Not Sufficient for Selecting Gender Diversity
  with Justus Baron, Nicola Persico, Timothy Simcoe, and Emanuele Tarantino; March 2021
  Revise & resubmit, Research Policy
  
  • Download: NBER, CEPR, SSRN
  • Nice summary by the Technology and Policy Research Initiative at Boston University.
  • "Do Diverse Hiring Committees Choose More Diverse Leaders?" (in KelloggInsight)

Other Working Papers

Contact me for the most recent version!

• The Availability of Injunctions in Standard-Essential Patent Licensing
  with Benno Buehler and Dominik Fischer; March 2023
  
  • Find the paper on SSRN
  • Online appendix


• Readability and Disclosure in Privacy Policies: Evidence from the GDPR
  with Jacopo Gambato and Julia Krämer; July 2022


• 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


• Strategic Information Disclosure: The Case of Pending Patents
  with David T. Angenendt and Jong-Min Oh; March 2022
  


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


• Keeping a Secret Longer: Evidence from Patent Applications
  with Imke Reimers

Work in Progress

• Do Trade Secrets Harm Competition?
• Effects of Patent Declarations on Technology Standardization
• Gender Role Models and Internet Standards Development
• Competition, Innovation, and Productivity: Evidence from Germany
• Do Commonly Held Firms Coordinate Their R&D? Evidence from Patents
• Mergers and the Direction of Corporate Innovation
• Innovation Strategy and R&D Tax Credits
• Soft-Landing Contracts
• The Disclosure Gap in Privacy Policies

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: April 28, 2023