NICEP Seminar: David Coluccia (University of Bristol)

Title:  Racial discrimination and innovation 

Abstract: We study how racial discrimination by patent examiners impacts the volume and quality of innovation in the United States. Our core observation is that examiners do not know the race of applicants but observe their last name as an imperfect proxy. We first document that individuals with Black-sounding surnames are substantially less likely to produce patents, regardless of race. To establish causality, we leverage plausibly exogenous variation in the timing of lynching episodes between 1882 and 1936. We hypothesize that lynching attacks accentuate the racial content of the victim's last name to examiners. In a matched difference-in-differences framework, we find an immediate decrease in patents granted to inventors who share their surnames with the victims of lynchings, but only when victims are Black. We read these findings as evidence of racial discrimination at the patent office and corroborate this interpretation against alternative mechanisms.

This is an in-person event.  

Host: Mattia Bertazzini