Intellectual Property Rights Protection, Ownership, and Innovation: Evidence from China

We are grateful for the helpful comments from Andrew Karolyi and two anonymous referees. We thank Harvard Business School’s Division of Research for their financial support. Patent Sight provided helpful data. Di Tang at Xia Men University helped with data collection. Seminar audiences at the American Economic Association annual meeting, Cornell University, London Business School, the Tsinghua PBSCF Conference on Entrepreneurial Finance and Innovation Around the World (especially our discussant, T.J. Wong), and the University of Pennsylvania provided helpful comments. Josh Lerner has advised institutional investors in venture capital funds, venture capital groups, and governments designing policies relevant to venture capital and innovation policy. Any errors and omissions are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.