How does the publication of patents affect innovation? We answer this question by exploiting a large-scale natural experiment--the passage of the American Inventor's Protection Act of 1999 (AIPA)--that accelerated the public disclosure of most U.S. patents by two years. We obtain causal...

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...