Does gender affect work quality and quantity? We study this question by leveraging the quasirandom assignment of patent applications to examiners, and micro-data on examiners' work characteristics at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Under the USPTO's incentive scheme that primarily...

We provide causal evidence of the effects of patent scope and review times on startups and externalities on their rivals. We leverage the quasi-random assignment of patent applications to examiners and unique data on all first-time applications filed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office since...