Gurun, Umit G.

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10735.1/4348

Dr. Gurun serves as a Professor of Accounting. His research interests include financial media and asset prices, advertising financial products, immigration networks in financial markets, and patent litigation. In 2019 he was made an Ashbel Smith Professor.

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    A Project-Level Analysis of Value Creation in Firms
    (John Wiley & Sons Inc.) Cohn, J. B.; Gurun, Umit G.; Moussawi, R.; Gurun, Umit G.
    This paper analyzes value creation in firms at the project level. We present evidence that managers facing short-termist incentives set a lower threshold for accepting projects. Using novel data on new client and product announcements in both the U.S. and international markets, we find that the market responds less positively to a new project announcement when the firm's managers have incentives to focus on short-term stock price performance. Furthermore, textual analysis of project announcements shows that firms with short-termist chief executive officers use vaguer and generically positive language when introducing new projects to the marketplace. ©2018 Financial Management Association International
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    Patent Trolls: Evidence from Targeted Firms
    Cohen, Lauren; Gurun, Umit G.; Kominers, Scott Duke
    We provide theoretical and empirical evidence on the evolution and impact of non-practicing entities (NPEs) in the intellectual property space. Heterogeneity in innovation, given a cost of commercialization, results in NPEs that choose to act as "patent trolls" that chase operating firms' innovations even if those innovations are not clearly infringing on the NPEs' patents. We support these predictions using a novel, large dataset of patents targeted by NPEs. We show that NPEs on average target firms that are flush with cash (or have just had large positive cash shocks). Furthermore, NPEs target firm profits arising from exogenous cash shocks unrelated to the allegedly infringing patents. We next show that NPEs target firms irrespective of the closeness of those firms' patents to the NPEs', and that NPEs typically target firms that are busy with other (non-IP related) lawsuits or are likely to settle. Lastly, we show that NPE litigation has a negative real impact on the future innovative activity of targeted firms.

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