Non-competes and innovation: Evidence from medical devices

Fenglong Xiao

Research Policy, 2022, vol. 51, issue 6

Abstract: Despite two decades of research on non-competes, whether non-competes promote or inhibit innovation remains an open question. The lack of consensus rests on not only the theoretical ambiguity but also the empirical limitations. Marshalling data on introductions of new medical devices as the direct measure of innovations in the medical devices industry and decomposing innovations according to their exploitative or exploratory natures, this work shows that an increase in the enforceability of noncompetes is associated with a higher rate of exploitative innovations and a lower rate of exploratory innovations. Further analysis shows that through such a shift of attention in the innovation process, an increase in the enforceability of non-competes results in a higher rate of total innovations. The implications and caveats of the enforcement of non-competes for stimulating innovation are discussed.

Keywords: Innovation; Non-compete; Exploitation; Exploration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733322000555
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:51:y:2022:i:6:s0048733322000555

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2022.104527

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().