Spin-offs and the Market for Ideas

Satyajit Chatterjee () and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg ()

No 13198, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We propose a theory of firm dynamics in which workers have ideas for new projects that can be sold in a market to existing firms or implemented in new firms: spin-offs. Workers have private information about the quality of their ideas. Because of an adverse selection problem, workers can sell their ideas to existing firms only at a price that is not contingent on their information. We show that the option to spin off in the future is valuable so only workers with very good ideas decide to spin off and set up a new firm. Since entrepreneurs of existing firms pay a price for the ideas sold in the market that implies zero expected profits for them, firms' project selection is independent of their size, which, under some assumptions, leads to scale-independent growth. The entry and growth process of firms in this economy leads to an invariant distribution that resembles the one in the US economy.

JEL-codes: E10 E23 L22 L23 L25 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-ent, nep-ino and nep-ppm
Date: 2007-06
Note: EFG IO
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Related works:
Working Paper: Spinoffs and the market for ideas (2008)
Working Paper: Spin-offs and the market for ideas (2007)
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