2021年5月1日
How Do Inventors Respond to Financial Incentives? Evidence from Unanticipated Court Decisions on Employees’ Inventions in Japan
The Journal of Law and Economics
- ,
- ,
- 巻
- 64
- 号
- 2
- 開始ページ
- 301
- 終了ページ
- 339
- 記述言語
- 英語
- 掲載種別
- 研究論文(学術雑誌)
- DOI
- 10.1086/712657
- 出版者・発行元
- University of Chicago Press
We use a novel panel data set of corporate inventors matched with their employers in Japan to examine the effects of output-based financial incentives on corporate inventors' performance. We exploit heterogeneous industry responses to Japanese court decisions that forced Japanese firms to introduce stronger incentives. We show, first, that only industries facing a high risk of employee-inventor lawsuits adopted or significantly strengthened financial incentives based on the commercial success of inventions in response to the court decisions. Our estimations reveal that stronger financial incentives in such industries reduced the number of highly cited patents and significantly decreased the incidence of science-based patents after technology-specific year effects are controlled for. These results show that the compulsion to remunerate employee-inventors on the basis of the commercial success of their inventions could distort the efficiency of corporate research and development and illustrate the importance of contracting freedom.</p>
- リンク情報
- ID情報
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- DOI : 10.1086/712657
- ISSN : 0022-2186
- eISSN : 1537-5285
- Web of Science ID : WOS:000715816700001