What Affects Innovation More: Policy or Policy Uncertainty?
研究了43个国家中政策与政策不确定性对技术创新的影响，发现政策本身影响不大，但政策不确定性（如大选期间）会显著降低创新活动，尤其是高影响力创新。
Motivated by a theoretical model, we examine for 43 countries whether it is policy or policy uncertainty that affects technological innovation more. Innovation activities, measured by patent-based proxies, are not, on average, affected by which policy is in place. Innovation activities, however, drop significantly during times of policy uncertainty measured by national elections. The drop is greater for more influential innovations (citations in the right tail, exploratory rather than exploitative innovations) and for innovation-intensive industries. We use close presidential elections and ethnic fractionalization to address endogeneity concerns. We uncover the mechanism underlying the main result by showing that the number of patenting inventors decreases with policy uncertainty. Political compromise, we conclude, encourages innovation.