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Big data on job vacancy postings reveal multiple dimensions of the impact of Covid-19 on corporate hiring. Firms disproportionately cut hiring for high-skill jobs (within-firm downskilling). Financially-constrained firms scaled back high-skill hiring most, as did firms with workforces more adaptable to "working-from-home." Applying machine learning to job-ad texts, we show that firms have skewed hiring towards operationally-core positions. New positions take longer to fill, displaying greater flexibility regarding schedules, tasks, and requirements. Financing constraints amplify pandemic-induced changes to the nature of positions firms seek to fill, with constrained firms' new hires witnessing larger adjustments to job roles and employment arrangements.

Innovation is difficult to finance as mere disclosure reduces its value. We study intellectual property licenses mandatorily disclosed by US public firms. Firms may temporarily redact information from these filings, offering a counterfactual to full-disclosure. Firms with valuable IP in competitive markets redact more often. Despite increased information asymmetry, investors react positively, inferring redaction signals IP worth hiding. Redactors experience better reactions when concealing tacit knowledge and worse reactions when IP is less protected (natural experiment) or redaction is less credible (repeated redaction, high competition). Our findings show credible non-disclosure partially resolves information frictions for innovative firms in public markets.

We study a novel database of intellectual property (IP) licensing agreements sourced from filings made by publicly-listed corporations, a large fraction of which firms (initially) disclose with redacted terms. In contrast to the benchmark that IP quality alone determines the pricing of IP, we argue that bargaining power plays a critical role and explains several patterns in observed royalty rates. Licensors with differentiated technology and high market power charge higher royalty rates, while larger-than-rival licensees pay lower royalty rates. Licensors command premium royalty rates for contractual features such as exclusivity. Finally, we employ this framework and setting to understand pricing implications of non-disclosure: licensors redact when they transact at lower royalty rates, consistent with preserving bargaining power for future negotiations. Our findings offer a new explanation for innovator secrecy and have several practical takeaways for transfer pricing and patent litigation.