IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/2025-60.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mega Firms and New Technological Trajectories in the U.S

Author

Listed:
  • Serguey Braguinsky
  • Joonkyu Choi
  • Yuheng Ding
  • Karam Jo
  • Seula Kim

Abstract

We provide evidence that mega firms have played an increasingly important role in shaping new technological trajectories in recent years. While the share of novel patents---defined as patents introducing new combinations of technological components---produced by mega firms declined until around 2000, it has rebounded sharply since then. Furthermore, we find that the technological impact and knowledge diffusion of novel patents by mega firms have grown relative to those by non-mega firms after 2001. We also explore potential drivers of this trend, presenting evidence that the rise in novel patenting by mega firms is tied to their disproportionate increase in cash holdings and the expansion of their technological scope. Our findings highlight an overlooked positive role of mega firms in the economywide innovation process.

Suggested Citation

  • Serguey Braguinsky & Joonkyu Choi & Yuheng Ding & Karam Jo & Seula Kim, 2025. "Mega Firms and New Technological Trajectories in the U.S," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2025-060, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2025-60
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2025.060
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2025060pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17016/FEDS.2025.060?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2025-60. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.