2023/06 | LEM Working Paper Series | ||||||||||||||||
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Risk, Precaution, and Regulation in Chemical Search and Innovation: The Case of the EU REACH Legislation |
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Gianluca Biggi |
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Keywords | |||||||||||||||||
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Chemical inventions; Patent data; Regulation; Knowledge recombination.
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JEL Classifications | |||||||||||||||||
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O38
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Abstract | |||||||||||||||||
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This study investigates the impact of the introduction of the European chemical
regulation (the EU REACH legislation) on chemical search and innovation by focusing on the
knowledge recombination processes leading to the generation of inventions. Using a novel
dataset of patents and chemical structures contained therein over the period 1978-2016, this
study readapts established patent indicators to capture the complexity, novelty, and novelty in
recombination of the inventive activities as a result of the chemical regulation. The separate
effect of the chemical regulation reflected in +39.8% of compounds per patent, +23% of new
compounds per patent, and +2% of newer recombinations of compounds per patent is supported
by the Propensity Score Matching estimations. The positive and significant effect of chemical
regulation on compound patenting supports prior scholarly work on the idea that regulations
by altering the search space, influence the rate and intensity of technological search and
innovation.
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