Laurie Ciaramella, Ph.D.

Affiliated Research Fellow

Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research
Assistant Professor, Télécom Paris – Institut Polytechnique de Paris

laurie.ciaramella(at)ip.mpg.de

Areas of Interest

Innovation, Intellectual Property, Markets for Technology, Financing of Innovation, Innovation Policy, Taxation, Firm Strategy

Academic Résumé

Since 01/2019
Assistant Professor at Télécom Paris – Institut Polytechnique de Paris

Affiliated Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research)

12/2017 - 12/2018
Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research)

05 - 06/2017
Research Visit, Searle Center on Law, Regulation and Economic Growth, Northwestern University, Chicago

12/2016 & 03 - 04/2017
Research Visit, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, College of Management, Switzerland

10/2014 - 12/2017
Doctoral Candidate and Research Fellow at MINES ParisTech (Centre for Industrial Economics, CERNA). Doctoral Thesis: “Trade and Relocation of Intellectual Property: Essays on the Markets for Patents.” Jury Members: Stuart Graham (Georgia Institute of Technology), Neus Palomeras (Universidad Carlos III), Carlos J. Serrano (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Yann Ménière (Mines ParisTech PSL), Catalina Martinez (CSIC-IPP)

2012 - 2014
Master of Science in Economics of Markets and Organizations, Toulouse School of Economics

2008 - 2011
Bachelor of Science in Economics, Université Paris Dauphine

Honours, Scholarships, Academic Prizes

2018
Best Dissertation Award Finalist, Technology and Innovation Management, Academy of Management
More

2017
Best PhD Paper (Bent Dalum) Award for the Most Promising and Innovative Research Project, DRUID 17 Academy

2017
Presentation at the Rising Star Session, EARIE

Publications

Articles in Refereed Journals

Ciaramella, Laurie (2023). Taxation and the Transfer of Patents: Evidence from Europe, European Economic Review 151. DOI

  • I study how taxes affect firms’ incentives to shift the location of intangible assets. Using firm-level data on patent reassignments, I exploit variations in statutory tax rates and the introduction of “patent box” policies as shocks modifying incentives to transfer patents across countries. The results suggest a large impact of taxes on asset shifting between affiliates, increasing with expected patent income, and driven by very large firms. Patent boxes are persistently associated with more incoming and less outgoing patent relocations between affiliates. These findings suggest that taxes provide firms with incentives to shift income via patent relocation, and advocate for considering patent transfer strategies in tax policy.
  • Also published as Working Paper

Ciaramella, Laurie; De Rassenfosse, Gaétan (2018). Distance and the Timing of Licensing, Academy of Management Proceedings, 2018 (1). DOI

  • We study the effect of geographical distance between the contracting parties on the timing of the licensing deal. Using insights from the transaction costs theory, we argue that geographical distance increases the search, information and contracting costs. We investigate this question using a novel dataset of licensing deals in France, containing geo-localization of parties together with detailed demographic and patent information. To identity the effect of geographical distance as a market friction, we control for the confounding determinants of the timing of the transaction. Because of the possibility that firms with similar interests may gather in business clusters, we argue that it is also important to control for the market and technology characteristics of the parties. We find that geographic distance delays the transaction, and that this effect is strong for SMEs. We also find market proximity to be a significant delayer of the licensing transaction. Our findings provide evidence for the existence of a local characteristic to markets for technology, which are usually seen as global.

Ciaramella, Laurie; Martínez, Catalina; Ménière, Yann (2017). Tracking Patent Transfers in Different European Countries: Methods and a First Application to Medical Technologies, Scientometrics, 112 (2), 817-850. DOI

  • Drawing on more than half a million granted patents in all technological sectors filed at EPO between 1998 and 2012 we gather information on 300,000 inscriptions affecting changes in their ownership at the EPO and top national registers (France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain). After grouping parallel legal events in different European validation countries, we find that more than 30% of EPO patents in all fields change ownership at least once. For the field of medical technologies, we exploit additional information on corporate structures to further distinguish between “intragroup” and “bare” changes of ownership thanks. Our results indicate that more than two-thirds of the transfers happen “intragroup”, that is between related corporate entities. Using regressions analyses, we finally explore and discuss relations between the occurrence and types of these transfers of patent and proxies for patent quality.

Contributions to Collected Editions

Ciaramella, Laurie; Rassenfosse, Gaétan de; Seliger, Florian (2022). Sources of Knowledge Flow between Developed and Developing Countries, in: Antony Taubman, Jayashree Watal (eds.), Trade in Knowledge. Intellectual Property, Trade and Development in a Transformed Global Economy, 265-292. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI

    Further Publications, Press Articles, Interviews

    Ciaramella, Laurie; Maraut, Stéphane; Martinez, Catalina; Ménière, Yann (2016). The Market for European Patents. Report to the French Patent Office. Courbevoie: L'Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle (INPI).

      Discussion Papers

      Ciaramella, Laurie; Gaessler, Fabian; Hall, Bronwyn H.; Harhoff, Dietmar (2019). Patent Transfers and Patent Citations, HAL archives ouvertes, No. hal-02307096.

        Baron, Justus; Ciaramella, Laurie (2019). The Markets for Standard Essential Patents.

          Ciaramella, Laurie; de Rassenfosse, Gaétan (2019). Geography and the Markets for Technology.

            Ciaramella, Laurie (2019). Taxation and the Transfer of Patents.

            Ciaramella, Laurie (2017). Patent Boxes and the Relocation of Intellectual Property. DOI

            • Firms can make use of the discretionary aspect of the location of patent ownership to avoid taxation and maximise their profits. This paper investigates patent transfers with regard to patent box regimes, and study how firms' incentives to relocate patents vary with the heterogeneity of the features of such regimes. Using a comprehensive dataset on international patent transfers, I find that patent box countries significantly attract more patent relocations, and that incoming flows increase in the tax rebate. The fiscal incentives are stronger in countries with a high R&D level, suggesting multiple dimensions in firms' decisions of patent relocation. This is all the more true for more valuable patents. I distinguish between intra-group relocation and patent trade. The results indicate that policy makers could tweak the designs of patent box regimes and the stringency of the rules governing patent transfers to deter relocation driven solely by fiscal optimization motives. Finally, I propose a novel instrument to address the potential endogeneity of R&D expenditures.

            Conferences and Seminars

            25.11.2021
            Financing Innovative Companies
            Alumni Workshop, Télécom Paris
            Location: Paris, France


            08.09.2021
            Doctoral Workshop on Markets for Technology
            EPIP Conference
            Location: Madrid, Spain


            01.07.2021
            Intellectual Property Rights as Loan Collateral
            Workshop on Digital and Innovation Economics
            Location: Trouville, France


            30.06.2021
            Markets for Technology and for Inventions: An Economic Analysis
            Télécom Paris – Research Days
            Location: Palaiseau, France


            06.05.2021
            Taxation and the Transfer of Patents: Evidence from European Patent Boxes
            LEI & BRICK Seminar, University of Torino – Collegio Carlo Alberto
            Location: Torino, Italy


            17.12.2020

            RISE3 Workshop
            Discussant
            Location: online (Munich)


            11.12.2020

            Joint PhD Workshop on Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Competition
            Discussant
            Location: online (Mannheim)


            13.09.2019

            Patent Transfers and Patent Citations
            14th Annual Conference of the EPIP Association
            Location: Zurich, Switzerland


            10.08.2019

            Organization of Academy of Management
            TIM Doctoral Workshop, Academy of Management Conference
            Location: Boston, Massachusetts, US


            26.06.2019

            Evidence-based Research on the Markets for Patents
            EIPIN IS Interdisciplinary Research Week, CEIPI
            Location: Strasbourg, France


            17.05.2019

            Geography and the Markets for Technology
            The 8th ZEW-MaCCI Conference on the Economics of Innovation and Patenting, ZEW
            Location: Mannheim


            04.04.2019

            Taxation and the Markets for Technology
            Workshop on Platforms, E-commerce and Digital Economics, CREST
            Location: Palaiseau, France


            04.12.2018

            Taxation and the Transfer of Patents
            IO and Trade Seminar, LMU Munich
            Location: Munich


            23.10.2018

            Taxation and the Transfer of Patents
            GRETHA
            Location: Bordeaux, France


            06.09.2018

            Distance and the Timing of Licensing
            13th Annual Conference of the EPIP Association, ESMT Berlin
            Location: Berlin


            14.08.2018

            Distance and the Timing of Licensing
            AOM 2018 Conference, Technology and Innovation Management
            Location: Chicago, Illinois, US


            12.08.2018

            Essays on the Markets for Patents
            AOM 2018 Conference, Technology and Innovation Management, Best Dissertations Session
            Location: Chicago, Illinois, US


            13.06.2018

            Distance and the Timing of Licensing
            DRUID 18 Conference, Copenhagen Business School (CBS)
            Location: Copenhagen, Denmark


            14.05.2018

            Distance and the Timing of Licensing
            67th Conference of the French Economic Association (AFSE), Paris School of Economics (PSE)
            Location: Paris, France


            23.04.2018

            Patent Boxes and the Relocation of Intellectual Property
            ZEW Public Finance Conference: The Future of Fiscal Coordination in Europe
            Location: Mannheim


            13.04.2018

            Patent Boxes and the Relocation of Intellectual Property
            5th International Meeting in Law and Economics, Institut d'Etudes Avancées de Paris
            Location: Paris, France


            07.04.2018

            The Markets for Standard Essential Patents
            10th Paris Conference on Digital Economics, Télécom MINES ParisTech
            Location: Paris, France


            04.04.2018

            Distance and the Timing of Licensing
            3rd Abbé Grégoire Innovation Days, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
            Location: Paris, France


            05.03.2018

            Patent Boxes and the Relocation of Intellectual Property
            Workshop of the OECD Expert Network on R&D Tax Incentive Design and Indicators, European Commission
            Location: Brussels, Belgium


            02.02.2018

            Distance and the Timing of Licensing
            4th Geography of Innovation Conference, University of Barcelona, 
            Location: Barcelona, Spain


            11.01.2018

            The Markets for Standard Essential Patents
            11th Digital Economics Conference, Toulouse School of Economics
            Location: Toulouse, France


            05.09.2017

            Patent Boxes and the Relocation of Intellectual Property
            12th Annual Conference of the EPIP Association, Université de Bordeaux
            Location: Bordeaux, France


            31.08.2017

            Patent Boxes and the Relocation of Intellectual Property
            44th EARIE Conference, Maastricht University
            Location: Maastricht, The Netherlands


            25.07.2017

            Patent Boxes and the Relocation of Intellectual Property
            Summer School on Empirical Research in Taxation and R&D, Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences
            Location: Mannheim


            23.06.2017

            Patent Boxes and the Relocation of Intellectual Property
            10th Searle Center/USPTO Conference on Innovation Economics, Northwestern University
            Location: Chicago, Illinois, US


            14.06.2017

            Patent Boxes and the Relocation of Intellectual Property
            DRUID 17 Conference, NYU Stern School of Business
            Location: New York City, NY, US


            08.06.2017

            Invited discussant
            8th Annual Conference on Internet Commerce and Innovation, Northwestern University
            Location: Chicago, Illinois, US


            05.05.2017

            Invited discussant
            5th Annual Searle Center Roundtable on Patents and Technology Standards, Northwestern University
            Location: Chicago, Illinois, US


            07.04.2017

            Distance and the Timing of Licensing
            Seminar at the IIPP Innovation Lunch, College of Management EPFL
            Location: Lausanne, Switzerland


            28.03.2017

            Patent Boxes and the Relocation of Intellectual Property
            2nd Abbé Grégoire Innovation Days, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
            Location: Paris, France


            03.03.2017

            Patent Boxes and the Relocation of Intellectual Property
            Seminar at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
            Location: Munich


            15.02.2017

            Patent Boxes and the Relocation of Intellectual Property
            Seminar at the Cerna Doctoral Workshop, MINES ParisTech
            Location: Paris, France


            19.01.2017

            Patent Boxes and the Relocation of Intellectual Property
            Druid Academy 17 Conference, University of Southern Denmark
            Location: Odense, Denmark


            03.09.2016

            Essays on the Markets for Patents
            Doctoral Workshop of the 11th Annual Conference of the EPIP Association, Pembroke College, Oxford University
            Location: Oxford, United Kingdom


            28.06.2016

            Tracking Patent Transfers in Europe
            65th Conference of the French Economic Association (AFSE), Faculty of Law, Economics and Management
            Location: Nancy, France

            Projects