This article uses a carefully screened patent database in automobile emission control technologies and a detailed regulatory action analysis to examine firms’ innovation in response to U.S. technology-forcing auto emissions standards enacted between 1970 and 1998. The study finds that under...

This article examines firms’ innovation activities in response to U.S. technology-forcing auto emissions standards enacted between 1970 and 1998. Patent applications in automobile emission control technologies were used as a measure of firms’ innovative responses to regulatory pressures. In...