It is found that electorally induced policy uncertainty decreases manufacturing investment in US states. In a state with average partisan polarization, the elasticity of election-year investment to a specific measure of policy uncertainty is −0.027. When the incumbent governor is term limited, there is greater uncertainty over the outcome, providing an instrument to demonstrate this effect is causal, not simply coincidental. Moreover, manufacturing investment does not rebound following the election. Rather, own-state uncertainty is associated with a large and significant coincident rise in neighboring states’ investment. These findings suggest that policy uncertainty at the subnational level drives investment to alternate sites. (JEL D25, D72, E22, G31, L60, R11)
Patents without established market values (e. g., no negotiated royalty rates) are often valued by comparing the number of citations the patent has received to the numbers received by other patents whose market values are established. For recently-issued patents, which have not had time to accumulate citations, this procedure can be noisy or even inapplicable. The current paper generalizes this valuation method to incorporate patent characteristics that relate to the number of citations the patent is expected to obtain in the future. We estimate statistical models in which the explanatory variables are observable characteristics of the patent at a given time, and the dependent variable is the number of citations that the patent receives after that date. Using several examples, we demonstrate a procedure for patent valuation that incorporates the statistical results, such that the valuation reflects the number of citations the patent has already received as well as the number it is expected, based on its characteristics, to receive in the future.
Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. We estimate the effect of electorally induced policy uncertainty on investment in the manufacturing sector. Because state governors exercise considerable influence over legislation and considerable discretion over regulation and permitting, and because the policies relevant to business investment vary systematically by party, uncertainty over the partisan affiliation of the future governor is a source of political risk to firms considering business investment. More importantly, the lack of an incumbent in a race due to term limits raises uncertainty over the outcome, providing a convincing instrument that allows us to estimate causal effects. We find that, in a state with average partisan polarization, in the calendar year of a gubernatorial election, the elasticity of investment to the eventual margin of victory is 0.027. Both the significance and magnitude of this result are robust to various controls, measures, and estimators. Importantly, the investment decline is not reversed the following year. We show that own-state uncertainty is associated with a large and significant rise in neighboring states' investment, suggesting that rather than postponing investment to the future, the effect of policy uncertainty at the subnational level is to drive investment to alternative sites.
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Documents inJEL-Codes: D720, E020, E640.
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