From Revolving Doors to Regulatory Capture? Evidence from Patent Examiners

From AcaWiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Citation: Haris Tabakovic, Thomas G. Wollmann (2018) From Revolving Doors to Regulatory Capture? Evidence from Patent Examiners.
DOI (original publisher): 10.3386/w24638
Semantic Scholar (metadata): 10.3386/w24638
Sci-Hub (fulltext): 10.3386/w24638
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): From Revolving Doors to Regulatory Capture? Evidence from Patent Examiners
Download: http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/thomas.wollmann/docs/Revolving Doors Tabakovic Wollmann.pdf
Tagged:

Summary

Claim first research on regulatory capture at decision level, where decision is treatment of a patent application by patent examiners, who may wish to work for a patent firm. Dataset includes "unique identifier of the examiner, the decisions he or she made, and the dates on which they were made. For applications that receive grants, we observe the number of citations that the patent receives, which provides a commonly-used proxy of quality. Separately, we observe periodic snapshots of the full list of licensed practitioners, including their name and unique identifier, as well as the name and address of their employer. We also supplement this data with biographical information (where available). In broad terms, the data links, at the decision level, the individuals setting regulation and the firms affected by that regulation to the individuals hired away from the regulator and firms hiring those individuals. To our knowledge, this is the first study to make these connections."

Findings:

  • Examiners that later take jobs with patent firms ("revolving door examiners") "grant 12.6-17.6% (8.5-11.9 percentage points) more patents to firms that later hire them"
  • "much of the leniency afforded to their future employers to other firms that are nearby, and that these results are robust to varying the granularity of the controls and restricting the sample to only firms or cities that hire at least one examiner"
  • Examiners are more lenient when firms are hiring more
  • Examiners are lenient to applications from firms closer to alma mater (but non-revolving examiners aren't)
  • As an indicator of effect on quality: "patents granted to the firm that later hires a revolving door examiner receive 21-27% fewer citations"