Research

Patents, Firm Rents, and Worker Compensation: Causal Evidence from Quasi-Random Patent Allocation — Draft

with André Diegmann

This paper provides new causal evidence on how patent allowances affect firms and their employees based on quasi-random assignment of patent applications to examiners. Exploiting employer–employee records with newly linked German firm data and web-scraped patent documents, we show that patent-induced shocks reduce firm exit, improve productivity, and increase wages, with rent-sharing elasticities between 0.10 and 0.21. Wage gains are broadly observed across occupational tasks, with substantial heterogeneity: managers benefit disproportionately in publicly traded firms, whereas broader wage increases accrue to workers in non-traded firms. Our findings highlight the role of institutional features and firm organization in shaping how rents are shared.

Patenting Activity in Germany Across Inventors and Firms

with André Diegmann, Enrico De Monte, Javier Miranda, and Verena Plümpe

Can AI Simulate Early Stage Investment Decisions?

with Alexander Reifschneider and Müge Süer

The Effect of Anticipated Discrimination on Gender Differences in Entrepreneurial Finance

with Alexander Reifschneider and Müge Süer

Intangible Investment and Wage Distribution

single-authored