How does the publication of patents affect innovation? To answer this question, we exploit a large-scale natural experiment — the passage of the American Inventor's Protection Act (AIPA) — that accelerated the public disclosure of most patents in the U.S. by two years. After the passage of...

Current academic and policy debates focus on the impact of tort reforms on physicians' behavior and medical costs. This paper examines whether these reforms also affect incentives to develop new technologies. We find that, on average, laws that limit the liability exposure of healthcare...