Disclosure and Subsequent Innovation: Evidence from the Patent Depository Library Program

(with Jeffrey L. Furman and Martin Watzinger)

How important is access to patent documents for subsequent innovation? We examine the expansion of the USPTO Patent Library system after 1975. Before the Internet, patent libraries provided access to patents. We find that after patent library opening, local patenting increases by 8-20% relative to similar regions, depending on the control group. Additional analyses suggest that disclosure of technical information drives this effect: the effect is strongest in technologies with clear disclosure, inventors increasingly take up ideas from outside their region, and inventor team composition is unaffacted. We thus provide evidence that disclosure plays an important role in cumulative innovation.

Conditionally accepted at American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

NBER Working Paper No. 24660, May 2018

New Version (March 2020)

Coverage: Brookings, Written Description, CATO Research Brief, VoxEU, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Report "Safeguarding the Bioeconomy"

Can Peer Mentoring Improve Online Teaching Effectiveness? An RCT During the COVID-19 Pandemic

(with David Hardt and Johannes Rincke)

Online delivery of higher education has taken center stage but is fraught with issues of student self-organization. We conducted an RCT to study the effects of remote peer mentoring at a German university that switched to online teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mentors and mentees met one-on-one online and discussed topics like self-organization and study techniques. We find positive impacts on motivation, studying behavior, and exam registrations. The intervention did not shift earned credits on average, but we demonstrate strong positive effects on the most able students. In contrast to prior research, effects were more pronounced for male students.

AEARCTR-0005868

CESifo Working Paper No. 8671

Current draft 

Coverage: Press Release (German), Bayerischer Rundfunk (in German), The Education Exchange, Ökonomenstimme (in German)

ICT, Collaboration, and Science-Based Innovation: Evidence from BITNET

(with Kathrin Wernsdorf and Martin Watzinger)

Does access to information and communication technologies (ICT) increase innovation? We examine this question by exploiting the staggered adoption of BITNET across U.S. universities in the 1980s. BITNET, an early version of the Internet, enabled e-mail-based knowledge exchange and collaboration among academics. After the adoption of BITNET, university-connected inventors increase patenting substantially. The effects are driven by collaborative patents by new inventor teams. The patents induced by ICT are exclusively science-related and stem from fields where knowledge can be codified easily. In contrast, we neither find an effect on patents not building on science nor on inventors unconnected to universities.

Short-listed for EPIP Young Scholar Award 2020

CESifo Working Paper No. 8646

Patents on General Purpose Technologies: Evidence from the Diffusion of the Transistor 

(with Monika Schnitzer and Martin Watzinger)

How do patents influence the spread of General Purpose Technologies (GPT)? To answer this question, we analyze the diffusion of the transistor, one of the most important technologies of our time. After AT&T began licensing the transistor on standardized terms in 1952, the diffusion of the transistor technology and especially cross-technology spillovers increased dramatically. This suggests that patents on GPTs may hinder the positive feedback loop between innovation in upstream and in application sectors, the primary reason why GPTs produce unusually large productivity improvements. Standardized licensing increased innovation and market entry in particular by unrelated inventors in unconcentrated markets..

CEPR Discussion Paper No. 15713