Attrition and the Gender Patenting Gap
研究发现女性在专利申请初期被拒绝后，继续申请的可能性比男性低3.6-6.9个百分点，这种放弃倾向解释了超过一半的专利授权性别差距，并暗示机构支持可缩小这一差距。
Abstract Women are underrepresented in patenting. In this study, we consider differential responsiveness to rejection as a contributor to the gender gap in invention. Leveraging the prosecution histories of almost one million U.S. patent applications and the quasi-random assignment of applications to examiners, we show that women are 3.6-6.9 percentage points less likely to continue in the application process following an early-stage rejection. Conditional on applying for a patent, male-female disparities in the propensity to abandon applications account for more than half of the overall gender gap in issued patents. We provide suggestive evidence that institutional support can help reduce the attrition gap.