Plausibly Exogenous [725] - Examiner Attention (01/13/2022)

LHS Variable
Patent quality and firm value

RHS Variable
Examiner busyness

Source of Exogenous Variation
Reallocation of an examiner's attention within the pool of patents she reviews following Kempf et al. (2017), who consider large drops in stock prices of patent applicant firms as attention-grabbing events that exogenous distractions to the patent applications that are under review by the same examiner, but without large stock price drops.

- Shu, Tian, and Zhan (2022), “Patent quality, firm value, and investor underreaction: Evidence from patent examiner busyness”