What Affects Innovation More: Policy or Policy Uncertainty?
What Affects Innovation More: Policy or Policy Uncertainty?
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DOI：
10.1017/s0022109017000540
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发表时间：
2017-10-01
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Xu, Yan
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bhattacharya, Utpal;Hsu, Po-Hsuan;Xu, Yan
基于一个理论模型，我们考察了43个国家的政策或政策不确定性对技术创新的影响。平均而言，以基于专利的替代指标衡量的创新活动不受现行政策的影响。然而，在全国选举所衡量的政策不确定时期，创新活动显著下降。对于更有影响力的创新（引用在右尾，探索性而不是剥削性创新）和创新密集型行业，下降幅度更大。我们利用势均力敌的总统选举和种族分化来解决国内问题。我们揭示的主要结果背后的机制表明，专利发明人的数量减少与政策的不确定性。我们的结论是，政治妥协鼓励创新。
Motivated by a theoretical model, we examine for 43 countries whether it is policy or policy uncertainty that affects technological innovation more. Innovation activities, measured by patent-based proxies, are not, on average, affected by which policy is in place. Innovation activities, however, drop significantly during times of policy uncertainty measured by national elections. The drop is greater for more influential innovations (citations in the right tail, exploratory rather than exploitative innovations) and for innovation-intensive industries. We use close presidential elections and ethnic fractionalization to address endo-geneity concerns. We uncover the mechanism underlying the main result by showing that the number of patenting inventors decreases with policy uncertainty. Political compromise, we conclude, encourages innovation.