NBER Publications by Thomas Hellmann

This paper investigates the relative performance of enterprises backed by government-sponsored venture capitalists and private venture capitalists. While previous studies focus mainly on investor returns, this paper focuses on a broader set of public policy objectives, including value-creation, innovation, and competition. A number of novel data-collection methods, including web-crawlers, are used to assemble a near-comprehensive data set of Canadian venture-capital backed enterprises. The results indicate that enterprises financed by government-sponsored venture capitalists underperform on a variety of criteria, including value-creation, as measured by the likelihood and size of IPOs and M&As, and innovation, as measured by patents. It is important to understand whether such underperforma...

This paper examines an ex-post rationale for the patenting of scientific discoveries. In this model, scientist do not know which firms can make use of their discoveries, and firms do not know which scientific discoveries might be useful to them. To bridge this gap, either or both sides need to engage in costly search activities. Patents determine the appropriability of scientific discoveries, which affects the scientists. and firms. willingness to engage in search. Patents decrease dissemination when the search intensity of firms is sufficiently elastic, relative to that of scientists. The model also examines the role of universities. Patents facilitate the delegation of search activities to the universities%u2019 technology transfer offices, which enables efficient specialization. ...