Data and Code for: Radical and Incremental Innovation: The Roles of Firms, Managers, and Innovators

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Daron Acemoglu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ufuk Akcigit, University of Chicago; Murat Alp Celik, University of Toronto

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
  Fortran simulation code 11/07/2020 09:07:PM
  figures 11/07/2020 09:03:PM
  in text numbers 11/07/2020 09:03:PM
  tables 11/07/2020 09:03:PM
  unweighted 05/26/2021 12:19:AM
  weighted 05/26/2021 12:18:AM
AAC_Fortran.exe application/x-dosexec 11.6 MB 11/07/2020 04:03:PM
B_tilde_0_solver_algebraic.m text/x-matlab 941 bytes 11/07/2020 04:03:PM
B_tilde_vec_calculator_iterative.m text/x-matlab 555 bytes 11/07/2020 04:03:PM
equilibrium_fct_3.m text/x-matlab 5.4 KB 11/07/2020 04:03:PM

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary This is the data and code for "Radical and Incremental Innovation: The Roles of Firms, Managers, and Innovators".

Abstract: This paper investigates the determinants of radical (“creative”) innovations – innovations that break new ground in terms of knowledge creation. After presenting a motivating model focusing on the choice between incremental and radical innovation, and on how managers of different ages and human capital are sorted across different types of firms, we provide firm-level and patent-level evidence that firms that are more open to hiring younger managers (those that are more “open to disruption”) are significantly more likely to engage in radical innovation. Our measures of radical innovations proxy for innovation quality (average number of citations per patent) and creativity (fraction of superstar innovators, the likelihood of a very high number of citations, and generality of patents). We present robust evidence that firms that have a comparative advantage in new innovations (e.g., because they are more open to disruption) generate more creative innovations, but we also show that once the effect of the sorting of young managers to such firms is factored in, the (causal) impact of manager age on creative innovations, though positive, is small.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms economic growth; innovation; organizational culture
JEL Classification:  View help for JEL Classification
      O33 Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
      O40 Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity: General
      O43 Institutions and Growth
      P10 Capitalist Systems: General
      P16 Capitalist Systems: Political Economy
      Z10 Cultural Economics; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology: General


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Published Versions

V1 [2022-06-24]

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