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SPINOFFS AND THE MARKET FOR IDEAS *
Author(s) -
Chatterjee Satyajit,
RossiHansberg Esteban
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
international economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.658
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1468-2354
pISSN - 0020-6598
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2354.2011.00671.x
Subject(s) - adverse selection , quality (philosophy) , private information retrieval , industrial organization , spin offs , microeconomics , business , economics , mathematics , philosophy , statistics , epistemology
We present a theory of entry through spinoffs where workers generate ideas and possess private information concerning their quality. Because quality is privately observed, adverse selection implies that the market can only offer a price that reflects the average quality of ideas sold. Only workers with good ideas decide to spin off, whereas workers with mediocre ideas sell them. Existing firms pay a price for ideas sold in the market that implies zero expected profits. Hence, firms’ project selection is independent of firm size, which can lead to scale‐independent growth. This mechanism results in invariant firm‐size distributions that resemble the data.