This paper examines how constraining resource adjustment affects a firm’s ability to innovate. In response to losing competitiveness, laggard firms release obsolete resources and increase their experimentation with new resources. Limiting the pace and efficiency at which they can do so may impede their ability to innovate and challenge leader firms. I explore these ideas empirically by exploiting the staggered adoption of employment protection laws by U.S. state courts that increase the cost of dismissing employees. I find that increases in employment protection result in fewer and less impactful patents by laggard firms. The effect is largely driven by a decrease in innovations that require significant resource adjustments, and is concentrated in sectors that require more frequent resource adjustments, such as those with high technological velocity or employee turnover. I also find that employment protection decreases the firing and hiring of inventors as well as the acquisition of external patents, further supporting the argument that constraining resource adjustment impedes firm innovation.

中文翻译：

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惩罚弱者？就业保护与企业创新的竞争动力

本文研究了约束性资源调整如何影响企业的创新能力。为应对竞争力下降，落后企业释放过时的资源，并增加了对新资源的试验。限制他们这样做的速度和效率可能会阻碍他们创新和挑战领先企业的能力。我通过利用美国各州法院错开采用的雇佣保护法来凭经验探索这些想法，这增加了解雇员工的成本。我发现，增加就业保护将使落后的公司获得越来越少的有影响力的专利。这种影响主要是由需要大量资源调整的创新减少所致，并且集中在需要更频繁地调整资源的行业中，例如技术速度快或员工流动率高的公司。我还发现，就业保护减少了发明人的解雇和聘用以及外部专利的获得，从而进一步支持了认为限制资源调整会阻碍企业创新的观点。