Racial Discrimination and Lost Innovation: Evidence from US Inventors, 1895–1925

Davide M. Coluccia, Gaia Dossi and Sebastian Ottinger

CERGE-EI Working Papers from The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague

Abstract: How can racial discrimination harm innovation? We study this question using data on US inventors linked to population censuses in 1895-1925. Our novel identification strategy leverages plausibly exogenous variation in the timing of lynchings and the name of the victims. We find an immediate and persistent decrease in patents granted to inventors who share their names with the victims of lynchings, but only when victims are Black. We hypothesize that lynchings accentuate the racial content of the victim’s name to patent examiners, who do not observe inventor race from patent applications. We interpret these findings as evidence of discrimination by patent examiners and provide evidence against alternative mechanisms.

Keywords: Discrimination; Innovation; Lynchings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 N31 N32 O11 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-ino, nep-lab, nep-tid and nep-ure
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