Email address

First name

Last name

Organization

Title

Harvard Affiliation

Harvard Role

Custom Question 1 Answer

Custom Question 2 Answer

Custom Question 3 Answer

Do you have any dietary restrictions?

YesNo

Please share your dietary needs:

If Allergy or Other, please explain:

Event Description

In this Academic Research Seminar, Josh Lerner will present his paper, co-authored by Namrata Kala and Junxi Liu “The Indian Innovation Puzzle&quot;
Speaker: Josh LernerCo-Authors: Namrata Kala (MIT Sloan School of Management) and Junxi Liu (University of Warwick)Paper Abstract: Despite recent increases in some measures of innovation, India continues to have very modest levels of domestic patenting, contradicting standard views of the importance of property rights in economic development. Using a novel, newly constructed dataset of Indian patent grants, we explore why Indian patenting has been so low. We examine whether an absence of non-patented innovation, differences in industry composition and public attitudes, and a lack of public market reactions to patent awards can explain these differences, and find only modest support for these explanations. We then show evidence of an institutional quality mechanism, i.e., long delays in patent examination. We estimate the causal effects of reduced delays using a natural experiment. Specifically, we show that a 2016 reform by IP India (the patent office) increased examination speeds for technology-office pairs that gained access to more same-field examiner capacity. In response, the mixture of applicants shifted away from applicants with very low success rates and towards high-quality filers. This improved institutional capacity also enhanced other innovation outcomes, boosting the financing of venture capital-backed firms. But the magnitude of these effects was modest, closing just over one-tenth the patenting gap between India and other leading nations. This modest effect may reflect the implementation of the reform (a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that high-quality patenting could have been increased by an additional 9 to 31 percent), as well as the uncertainty surrounding patent litigation. These results underscore the importance of institutional quality in facilitating innovation.
Speaker Bio: Josh Lerner is the Jacob H. Schiff Professor at Harvard Business School and Co-Director of the HBS Private Capital Project. Much of his research focuses on venture capital and private equity organizations and innovation policy. He has been recently recognized as among the forty most influential economists worldwide by ScholarGPS and <a href="http://research.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">research.com</a>.
He has co-directed the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program since 2010 and serves as co-editor of their publication, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy. He founded and runs the Private Capital Research Institute, a nonprofit devoted to encouraging access to data and research and has been a frequent leader of and participant in the World Economic Forum projects and events.
Whether attending in person or virtually, please register in advance.
The Growth Lab’s Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development

Show Organization & Job Title

Show Harvard Affiliation

Show Dietary Questions

Custom Question 3 Type

Custom Question 1 PL Values

Custom Question 2 PL Values

Custom Question 3 PL Values

Primary Organizer

Event Owner