Did the Defend Trade Secrets Act Spur the Reliance on Trade Secrets?

Katrin Hussinger

DEM Discussion Paper Series from Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg

Abstract: "This paper explores whether the U.S. Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) increased the declaration of trade secrets. Leveraging cross-sectoral variation in the importance of trade secrets prior to the DTSA, empirical results show that the DTSA was followed by an increase in the intensive margin of trade secrets declaration in service industries, not in manufacturing industries though. The extensive margin of trade secret declaration increased in both services and manufacturing, where the surge was strongest in manufacturing. The extensive margin increased most strongly for manufacturing with a high sectoral R&D intensity. The results are of interest to policy makers as trade secrets can hinder knowledge flows with potential implications for innovation."

Keywords: Defend Trade Secrets Act; trade secrets; extensive and intensive margin (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L60 L80 O31 O32 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/10993/67981 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:luc:wpaper:26-06

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DEM Discussion Paper Series from Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marina Legrand ().