The Role of Anti-Spying Acts on R&D Patents Dynamics

The aim of this paper is to show the role of the UTSA (Uniform Trade Secret Act) and the EEA (Economic Espionage Act) on the contemporary US innovation activity. To do that we first proceed building the historical series of the granted patents for each US manufacturing industry; then we link the trend of each industry patents with the historical series of the total R&D expenditure and we get different permanent relations by industry. Finally, using the Chow test in the issuing years, we evaluate an increase of the R&D expenditure parameter (growth effect) only in high-tech sectors. [JEL Classification: 031, 034, L52]

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* Francesco.Schettino@uniroma1.it