How Do Inventors Respond to Financial Incentives? Evidence from Unanticipated Court Decisions on Employees
How Do Inventors Respond to Financial Incentives? Evidence from Unanticipated Court Decisions on Employees
复制标题
发明家如何应对经济激励？
DOI：
10.1086/712657
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发表时间：
2021
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
and Sadao Nagaoka
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Koichiro Onishi;Hideo Owan;and Sadao Nagaoka
我们使用与日本雇主相匹配的企业发明人的新颖面板数据集来研究基于产出的财务激励对企业发明人绩效的影响。我们利用不同行业对日本法院判决的反应，这些判决迫使日本公司引入更强的激励措施。首先，我们表明，只有面临员工发明人诉讼高风险的行业才会根据法院判决，根据发明的商业成功采取或显着加强经济激励措施。我们的估计表明，在控制特定技术年份效应后，这些行业中更强的财政激励措施减少了高被引专利的数量，并显着降低了基于科学的专利的发生率。这些结果表明，强制根据发明的商业成功程度来支付雇员发明人的报酬可能会扭曲企业研发的效率，并说明缔约自由的重要性。
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.