Research Interests

Innovation economics, corporate investment, behavioral finance

Publications

Patent Thickets and Mergers and Acquisitions (with Logan Emery) 

• Forthcoming at The Review of Corporate Finance Studies

  • We examine how patent thickets - clusters of interdependent patents that increase coordination and bargaining costs - shape acquisition decisions. Firms are less likely to be acquired when embedded in external thickets but more likely when their patents form internal thickets that consolidate control. When acquirers and targets share an external thicket, acquisition likelihood rises if the acquirer depends on the target and falls when the dependence runs in the opposite direction.

• SSRN link to paper

• Featured on Columbia Law School blog

• GitHub link to patent-SDC match data

Measuring Firms' Capability to Absorb External Knowledge (with M. Deniz Yavuz)

• Journal of Financial Economics, 2026, 183, 104322

  • We develop a patent-based measure of firms’ capability to leverage external knowledge - absorption intensity - and validate it using the exogenous increase in patent disclosure caused by the American Inventors Protection Act. Our results show that firms with higher absorption intensity experience greater gains in innovation and growth.

  • GitHub link to absorption intensity data

Price-Path Convexity and Short-Horizon Return Predictability (with Huseyin Gulen)

• Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2026, 61 (2), 547-579

  • We document a strong negative relation between the curvature of stock price paths (i.e., price-path convexity) and future short-horizon returns at both the aggregate and firm levels. This relation obtains regardless of the cumulative return during the convexity estimation period. Using survey-based expectations of short-horizon returns, we provide evidence that the negative relation between convexity and future returns is driven in part by overextrapolation of past short-horizon returns.

  • GitHub link to convexity data

Small Innovators: No risk, No return (with Noah Stoffman and M. Deniz Yavuz) 

• • Journal of Accounting and Economics, 2022, 74 (1), 101492

    • We find that small innovators (small firms with recent patent grants) earn higher future returns than small non-innovators. These returns are driven by risk, not underreaction due to information processing costs. Small innovators are riskier because of their reliance on external funding and strategic alliances.

    • GitHub link to patent-CRSP permco match data 

Using Patent Capital to Estimate Tobin's Q 

• • Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2022, 57 (8), 2899-2928

    • I construct a new proxy for Tobin's Q that incorporates the replacement cost of patent capital. This proxy, which I call patent Q, explains up to 31% more variation in investment than the standard proxy for Q and up to 62% more variation in investment than total Q of Peters and Taylor (2017). Controlling for patent Q leads to larger, not smaller, cash flow coefficients. 

    • GitHub link to patent q data

Working Papers

Patent Protection and the Allocation of Startup Financing (with Elif Guler and Alexander Montag)

We study how patent protection affects the allocation of startup financing. Using the Supreme Court's Bilski v. Kappos decision, which unexpectedly narrowed patent eligibility, we examine how venture capital (VC) investors respond to weaker property rights over innovation. Exploiting cross-industry variation in exposure to the ruling, we find that more exposed industries experienced larger increases in initial VC investment. This effect reflects capital reallocation: funding rises for startups without patents but falls for startups holding pre-Bilski patents. Our findings suggest that weaker patent protection can expand VC-backed entry and redirect capital toward startups previously disadvantaged by incumbent patents..

• SSRN link to paper

House Price Dynamics and Mortgage Default Risk (with Jordan Martel)

We find that house price momentum, defined as positive autocorrelation in aggregate house price changes, is stronger and house price change volatility is weaker when and where mortgage default risk at origination is higher. These facts appear widely, both geographically and temporally, and are difficult to reconcile with existing theories of house price dynamics. To explain these facts, we introduce a model in which lenders use valuations that incorporate information relatively slowly. In equilibrium, prices reflect the valuations used by lenders most when default risk is highest. Our model jointly explains the observed relations between default risk, momentum, and volatility.

• SSRN link to paper

Startup Financing and Incumbent Innovation

I study how startup financing affects innovation beyond the companies it funds. Exploiting the post-1979 expansion in VC supply following ERISA's prudent man clarification, I find that incumbents in industries with greater pre-shock VC exposure increase patenting more after the shock. The response is concentrated among medium-sized firms, which increase patenting across multiple dimensions of innovation. Among these firms, the effect is strongest for those with greater technological capacity and organizational flexibility, suggesting that these capabilities help incumbents translate VC-backed competitive pressure into inventive output. Overall, startup financing shapes technological progress by changing both how much and how incumbents innovate.