When Does Product Liability Risk Chill Innovation? Evidence from Medical Implants
利用美国医用聚合物供应商责任风险的外生冲击，研究发现供应商责任风险上升显著抑制了下游医疗植入物的创新，但对上游聚合物专利无显著影响。
Liability laws designed to compensate for harms caused by defective products may also affect innovation. We examine this issue by exploiting a major quasi-exogenous increase in liability risk faced by US suppliers of polymers used to manufacture medical implants. Difference-in-difference analyses show that this surge in suppliers’ liability risk had a large and negative impact on downstream innovation in medical implants, but it had no signifi-cant effect on upstream polymer patenting. Our findings suggest that liability risk can percolate throughout a vertical chain and may have a significant chilling effect on downstream innovation.