Scholars@Duke
Wesley M. Cohen

Wesley M. Cohen

Snow Family Distinguished Professor
Fuqua School of Business
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Selected Publications

Invention value, inventive capability and the large firm advantage

Journal Article Research Policy · January 1, 2023 Do large firms produce more valuable inventions, and if so, why? After confirming that large firms indeed produce more valuable inventions, we consider two possible sources: a superior ability to invent, or a superior ability to extract value from their in ... Full text Cite

Not in the job description: The commercial activities of academic scientists and engineers

Journal Article Management Science · September 1, 2020 Scholarly work seeking to understand academics’ commercial activities often draws on abstract notions of the academic reward system and the representative scientist. Few scholars have examined whether and how scientists’ motives to engage in commercial act ... Full text Cite

The three legs of a stool: Comment on Richard Nelson, “The sciences are different and the differences matter”

Journal Article Research Policy · November 1, 2016 In our response to Nelson's important argument regarding the fit of research methods with the subject matter of various natural and social sciences, we highlight the complementarities offered by combining qualitative analysis with modeling and statistical ... Full text Cite

The acquisition and commercialization of invention in American manufacturing: Incidence and impact

Scholarly Edition · July 1, 2016 Recent accounts suggest the development and commercialization of invention has become more "open." Greater division of labor between inventors and innovators can enhance social welfare through gains from trade and economies of specialization. Moreover, thi ... Full text Cite

Public support for technical advance: The role of firm size

Journal Article Industrial and Corporate Change · August 1, 2015 This article develops a model that shows how firm size-that most important firm-level correlate of R&D-moderates the impact of demand- and supply-side government policies that support R&D. The most robust result is that government support to product R&D wi ... Full text Cite

The legacy of Steven Klepper: Industry evolution, entrepreneurship, and geography

Journal Article Industrial and Corporate Change · August 1, 2015 This introductory essay of the Special Issue honoring Steven Klepper provides a synthesis of his work, and places the articles of the Special Issue within the context of his scholarship. Steven Klepper's pioneering work linked life cycle patterns in indust ... Full text Cite

Innovation and Technological Change, Economics of

Chapter · March 26, 2015 We review empirical findings on the determination of R&D and R&D performance, as well as key questions that remain unaddressed. This article briefly considers the Schumpeterian hypotheses relating innovation to market structure and firm size, and considers ... Full text Cite

Lens or Prism? Patent Citations as a Measure of Knowledge Flows from Public Research.

Journal Article Management science · February 2013 This paper assesses the validity and accuracy of firms' backward patent citations as a measure of knowledge flows from public research by employing a newly constructed dataset that matches patents to survey data at the level of the R&D lab. Using survey-ba ... Full text Cite

Patents, material transfers, and access to research inputs in biomedical research

Chapter · January 1, 2011 Introduction As patenting of both the inputs and outputs of scientific research have become more common, policy makers are faced with the question of whether introducing patenting into the system of scientific rewards is hurting or helping the causes of sc ... Full text Cite

What makes them tick? Employee motives and firm innovation

Journal Article Management Science · December 1, 2010 Economists studying innovation and technological change have made significant progress toward understanding firms' profit incentives as drivers of innovation. However, innovative performance in firms should also depend heavily on the pecuniary and nonpecun ... Full text Open Access Cite

Fifty years of empirical studies of innovative activity and performance

Journal Article · January 1, 2010 This chapter reviews the empirical literature on the determination of firms' and industries' innovative activity and performance, highlighting the questions addressed, the approaches adopted, impediments to progress in the field, and research opportunities ... Full text Cite

R&D and the patent premium

Journal Article International Journal of Industrial Organization · September 1, 2008 We analyze the effect of patenting on R&D with a model linking a firm's R&D effort with its decision to patent, recognizing that R&D and patenting affect one another and are both driven by many of the same factors. Using survey data for the U.S. manufactur ... Full text Cite

Where excludability matters: Material versus intellectual property in academic biomedical research

Journal Article Research Policy · October 1, 2007 On the basis of survey responses from 507 academic biomedical researchers, we examine the impact of patents on access to the knowledge and material inputs that are used in subsequent research. We observe that access to knowledge inputs is largely unaffecte ... Full text Cite

Real Impediments to Academic Biomedical Research

Conference Innovation Policy and the Economy · January 2007 Full text Cite

Patents and appropriation: Concerns and evidence

Journal Article · December 1, 2005 For over the past twenty years, the United States has witnessed a pro-patent movement. In response, numerous concerns have been raised, including possible impediments to innovation in cumulative technologies, emergence of anti-commons, barriers to entry an ... Full text Cite

Invention value, inventive capability and the large firm advantage

Journal Article Research Policy · January 1, 2023 Do large firms produce more valuable inventions, and if so, why? After confirming that large firms indeed produce more valuable inventions, we consider two possible sources: a superior ability to invent, or a superior ability to extract value from their in ... Full text Cite

Not in the job description: The commercial activities of academic scientists and engineers

Journal Article Management Science · September 1, 2020 Scholarly work seeking to understand academics’ commercial activities often draws on abstract notions of the academic reward system and the representative scientist. Few scholars have examined whether and how scientists’ motives to engage in commercial act ... Full text Cite

The three legs of a stool: Comment on Richard Nelson, “The sciences are different and the differences matter”

Journal Article Research Policy · November 1, 2016 In our response to Nelson's important argument regarding the fit of research methods with the subject matter of various natural and social sciences, we highlight the complementarities offered by combining qualitative analysis with modeling and statistical ... Full text Cite

The acquisition and commercialization of invention in American manufacturing: Incidence and impact

Scholarly Edition · July 1, 2016 Recent accounts suggest the development and commercialization of invention has become more "open." Greater division of labor between inventors and innovators can enhance social welfare through gains from trade and economies of specialization. Moreover, thi ... Full text Cite

Public support for technical advance: The role of firm size

Journal Article Industrial and Corporate Change · August 1, 2015 This article develops a model that shows how firm size-that most important firm-level correlate of R&D-moderates the impact of demand- and supply-side government policies that support R&D. The most robust result is that government support to product R&D wi ... Full text Cite

The legacy of Steven Klepper: Industry evolution, entrepreneurship, and geography

Journal Article Industrial and Corporate Change · August 1, 2015 This introductory essay of the Special Issue honoring Steven Klepper provides a synthesis of his work, and places the articles of the Special Issue within the context of his scholarship. Steven Klepper's pioneering work linked life cycle patterns in indust ... Full text Cite

Innovation and Technological Change, Economics of

Chapter · March 26, 2015 We review empirical findings on the determination of R&D and R&D performance, as well as key questions that remain unaddressed. This article briefly considers the Schumpeterian hypotheses relating innovation to market structure and firm size, and considers ... Full text Cite

Lens or Prism? Patent Citations as a Measure of Knowledge Flows from Public Research.

Journal Article Management science · February 2013 This paper assesses the validity and accuracy of firms' backward patent citations as a measure of knowledge flows from public research by employing a newly constructed dataset that matches patents to survey data at the level of the R&D lab. Using survey-ba ... Full text Cite

Patents, material transfers, and access to research inputs in biomedical research

Chapter · January 1, 2011 Introduction As patenting of both the inputs and outputs of scientific research have become more common, policy makers are faced with the question of whether introducing patenting into the system of scientific rewards is hurting or helping the causes of sc ... Full text Cite

What makes them tick? Employee motives and firm innovation

Journal Article Management Science · December 1, 2010 Economists studying innovation and technological change have made significant progress toward understanding firms' profit incentives as drivers of innovation. However, innovative performance in firms should also depend heavily on the pecuniary and nonpecun ... Full text Open Access Cite

Fifty years of empirical studies of innovative activity and performance

Journal Article · January 1, 2010 This chapter reviews the empirical literature on the determination of firms' and industries' innovative activity and performance, highlighting the questions addressed, the approaches adopted, impediments to progress in the field, and research opportunities ... Full text Cite

R&D and the patent premium

Journal Article International Journal of Industrial Organization · September 1, 2008 We analyze the effect of patenting on R&D with a model linking a firm's R&D effort with its decision to patent, recognizing that R&D and patenting affect one another and are both driven by many of the same factors. Using survey data for the U.S. manufactur ... Full text Cite

Where excludability matters: Material versus intellectual property in academic biomedical research

Journal Article Research Policy · October 1, 2007 On the basis of survey responses from 507 academic biomedical researchers, we examine the impact of patents on access to the knowledge and material inputs that are used in subsequent research. We observe that access to knowledge inputs is largely unaffecte ... Full text Cite

Real Impediments to Academic Biomedical Research

Conference Innovation Policy and the Economy · January 2007 Full text Cite

Patents and appropriation: Concerns and evidence

Journal Article · December 1, 2005 For over the past twenty years, the United States has witnessed a pro-patent movement. In response, numerous concerns have been raised, including possible impediments to innovation in cumulative technologies, emergence of anti-commons, barriers to entry an ... Full text Cite

Science and law. View from the bench: patents and material transfers.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · September 2005 Full text Cite

Patents and appropriation: Concerns and evidence

Journal Article Journal of Technology Transfer · December 1, 2004 For over the past twenty years, the United States has witnessed a pro-patent movement. In response, numerous concerns have been raised, including possible impediments to innovation in cumulative technologies, emergence of anti-commons, barriers to entry an ... Full text Cite

Science and the law. Working through the patent problem.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · February 2003 Full text Cite

RandD spillovers, patents and the incentives to innovate in Japan and the United States

Journal Article Research Policy · January 1, 2002 National surveys of RandD labs across the manufacturing sectors in the US and Japan show that intraindustry RandD knowledge flows and spillovers are greater in Japan than in the US and the appropriability of rents due to innovation less. Patents in particu ... Full text Cite

R&D spillovers, patents and the incentives to innovate in Japan and the United States

Journal Article Research Policy · 2002 National surveys of R&D labs across the manufacturing sectors in the US and Japan show that intraindustry R&D knowledge flows and spillovers are greater in Japan than in the US and the appropriability of rents due to innovation less. Patents in par ... Cite

Links and impacts: The influence of public research on industrial R&D

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 2002 In this paper, we use data from the Carnegie Mellon Survey on industrial R&D to evaluate for the U.S. manufacturing sector the influence of "public" (i.e., university and government R&D lab) research on industrial R&D, the role that public research plays i ... Full text Cite

Introduction to the Special Issue in Honor of Richard Nelson

Journal Article Industrial and Corporate Change · August 1, 2001 Full text Cite

Is the tendency to variation a chief cause of progress?

Journal Article Industrial and Corporate Change · January 1, 2001 This paper briefly reviews the sources of the diversity of innovative activity within industries, and interprets the literature to suggest that there are three ways in which such diversity may stimulate technological progress, including a selection effect, ... Full text Cite

The nature, sources, and consequences of firm differences in the early history of the semiconductor industry

Journal Article Strategic Management Journal · January 1, 2000 Four entrants into the early semiconductor industry - Sprague Electric, Motorola, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratories, and Fairchild Semiconductor - displayed remarkably different performance and behavior. Case studies of the firms demonstrate that the key ... Full text Cite

What's experience got to do with it? Sources of cost reduction in a large specialty chemicals producer

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 2000 Conventional learning curves relating unit cost to measures of production experience are estimated for 221 specialty chemicals produced by a Fortune 500 company. Detailed records on cost and R&D coupled with insights from company personnel are used to expl ... Full text Cite

Reply to 'comments on 'fortune favors the prepared firm''

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 1997 Joglekar, Bohl, and Hamburg (JBH) make two basic sets of criticisms of our paper (Cohen and Levinthal 1994) in their comment. First, they object to two key elements of the model structure: the relevance of the monopoly analysis and the appropriateness of m ... Full text Cite

Firm size and the nature of innovation within industries: The case of process and product R&D

Journal Article Review of Economics and Statistics · January 1, 1996 The effect of firm size on the allocation of R&D effort between process and product innovation is examined. It is hypothesized that relative to product innovations, process innovations are less saleable in disembodied form and spawn less growth. This impli ... Full text Cite

A reprise of size and R and D

Journal Article Economic Journal · January 1, 1996 Numerous studies have shown that within industries, the propensity to perform R and D and the amount of R and D conducted by performers are closely related to the size of the firm, while R and D productivity declines with firm size. These findings have bee ... Full text Cite

Fortune Favors the Prepared Firm

Journal Article Management Science · February 1994 A critical factor in industrial competitiveness is the ability of firms to exploit new technological developments. We term this ability a firm's absorptive capacity and argue that such a capability not only enables a firm to exploit new extramural ... Full text Cite

The tradeoff between firm size and diversity in the pursuit of technological progress

Journal Article Small Business Economics · March 1, 1992 Our analysis lends support to both sides of the debate concerning the optimal firm size for achieving technical advance. It provides a basis for why industries composed of many small firms will tend to exhibit greater diversity in the approaches to innovat ... Full text Cite

The Anatomy of Industry R&D Intensity Distributions

Journal Article American Economic Review · 1992 Cite

Absorptive Capacity: A New Perspective on Learning and Innovation

Journal Article Administrative Science Quarterly · 1990 Cite

Incomplete markets, intra-industry firm heterogeneity and investment. The case of uranium exploration

Journal Article Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization · January 1, 1990 We argue that as a result of incomplete factor markets, firm-specific variables representing selected characteristics of firms may influence and differentiate firms' investment behavior within industries. This paper operationalizes and test the framework w ... Full text Cite

Chapter 18 Empirical studies of innovation and market structure

Journal Article Handbook of Industrial Organization · December 1, 1989 Full text Cite

Innovation and Learning: The Two Faces of R&D

Journal Article Economic Journal · 1989 Cite

Investment and industrial expansion. A corporate variables framework

Journal Article Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization · January 1, 1983 The article proposes that firm investment and, in turn, industry expansion are determined by firm-specific corporate variables in addition to the typically considered variables characterizing the firm's experience and expected conditions in a given market, ... Full text Cite