From Revolving Doors to Regulatory Capture? Evidence from Patent Examiners / Haris Tabakovic, Thomas G. Wollmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tabakovic, Haris.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Wollmann, Thomas G.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w24638.

NBER working paper series no. w24638

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2018.

Summary:

Many regulatory agency employees are hired by the firms they regulate, creating a "revolving door" between government and the private sector. We study these transitions using detailed data from the US Patent and Trademark Office. We find that patent examiners grant significantly more patents to the firms that later hire them and that much of this leniency extends to prospective employers. These effects are strongest in years when firms are actively hiring, and these relationships hold for the intensive margin of intellectual property protection. Ultimately, this leads the agency to issue lower quality patents, which we measure in citations. Together with other supporting evidence, we argue these results are suggestive of regulatory capture.

Notes:

Print version record

May 2018.