Plausibly Exogenous [984] - Technology Spillover (10/09/2022)

LHS Variable
Stock returns

RHS Variable
Technology spillover

Source of Exogenous Variation
(1) Staggered passage of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in peer firms’ reliance on trade secrecy; (2) State-level staggered adoption of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine, which prohibits employees from working for other firms if confidential information could be possibly revealed as a result; (3) Passage of American Inventor’s Protection Act which accelerated patent disclosures by accelerating disclosure deadlines for some applications and setting the default disclosure choice for all others to 18 months after filing

- Tseng (2022), “Learning from the Joneses: Technology spillover, innovation externality, and stock returns”