Learning by Viewing? Social Learning, Regulatory Disclosure, and Firm Productivity in Shale Gas

T. Robert Fetter, Andrew L. Steck, Christopher Timmins and Douglas Wrenn ()

No 25401, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In many industries firms can learn about new technologies from other adopters; mandatory disclosure regulations represent an understudied channel for this type of social learning. We study an environmentally-focused law in the shale gas industry to examine firm claims that disclosure requirements expose valuable trade secrets. Our research design takes advantage of a unique regulatory history that allows us to observe complete information on chemical inputs prior to disclosure, along with the timing of information availability for thousands of wells after disclosure takes effect. We find that firms’ chemical choices following disclosure converge in a manner consistent with inter-firm imitation and that this leads to more productive wells for firms that carefully choose whom to copy — but also a decline in innovation among the most productive firms, whose innovations are those most often copied by other firms. Our results suggest there is a long-run welfare trade-off between the potential benefits of information diffusion and transparency, and the potential costs of reduced innovation.

JEL-codes: L24 L51 L71 O3 Q35 Q53 Q55 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-ino and nep-reg
Note: EEE IO
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published as Theodore Robert Fetter & Andrew Steck & Christopher Timmins & Douglas Wrenn, 2017. "Learning by Viewing? Social Learning, Regulatory Disclosure and Firm Productivity in Shale Gas," Academy of Management Proceedings, vol 2017(1).

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w25401.pdf (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:nbr:nberwo:25401

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w25401

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().