Political Sentiment and Innovation: Evidence from Patenters

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Engelberg, Joseph; Lu, Runjing; Mullins, William; Townsend, Richard
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California San Diego; University of Toronto; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF FINANCIAL STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0893-9454
• DOI: 10.1093/rfs/hhaf029
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 2718
• 关键词: happiness; MODEL

摘要

We document political sentiment effects on U.S. inventors. Democratic inventors are more likely to patent (relative to Republicans) after the 2008 election of Obama but less likely after the 2016 election of Trump. These effects are at least twice as strong among politically active Democrats and are present even within firms and within firm$ \times $technology. We also show that partisans tend to cluster in technologies (e.g., Democrats in Biotechnology and Republicans in Weapons), so that sentiment effects aggregate to more patents in the technologies dominated by the winning party.