Data and Code for: "The Paradox of Innovation Non-Disclosure: Evidence from Licensing Contracts."

This page contains code (and some data/pseudo-data) to replicate the paper "The Paradox of Innovation Non-Disclosure: Evidence from Licensing Contracts" <br><br>Abstract:<br>Innovative firms must trade off disclosing to investors and maintaining secrecy from competitors. We study this trade-off in a sample of IP licenses mandatorily disclosed by US public firms, whose contents can be temporarily redacted. Hand-classifying the redacted information, we find that firms with valuable IP in competitive markets redact IP information more often. Markets react positively to the redaction of IP information, consistent with theoretical predictions rationalizing a separating equilibrium in which non-disclosure signals more valuable IP. Our results suggest that credible non-disclosure partially resolves information frictions for innovative public firms when facilitated by sophisticated investors.