Job Market Paper
Abstract
I develop a three-player game-theoretic model of patenting. An applicant chooses how extensively to search for prior art, determining the information brought into the patenting process and the claimed patent breadth. An examiner conducts additional search and might narrow the claimed breadth. A challenger conducts additional search and might challenge the patent. The public record from earlier search affects the likelihood of challenge by affecting the informativeness of later search. My equilibrium characterization yields comparative statics for how search and breadth respond to challenger filing costs, procedural standards, and examiner capacity. These results generate testable implications for patent breadth, grant outcomes, and post-grant challenge behavior.
Working Papers
Abstract
I examine how the threat of post-grant patent review affects behavior during patent prosecution. The America Invents Act expanded administrative procedures for challenging issued patents, changing the consequences of obtaining patents vulnerable to later review. I construct an extended dataset linking U.S. published patent applications to granted patents through 2020 and exploit differences in pre-reform litigation exposure across USPTO art units in an exposure-based difference-in-differences design. I find that more exposed art units have narrower minimum independent claims following the reform. A one-standard-deviation increase in historical litigation exposure is associated with approximately 2.25 additional words in minimum independent claim length at publication. Similar patterns appear using first independent claim length. Grant-stage outcomes exhibit substantial pre-existing differences across more and less exposed art units, and a matched-sample decomposition shows that these differences historically arose primarily during prosecution, while in later post-reform cohorts more of the exposure relationship is already present at publication. These findings suggest that changes in downstream challenge risk can affect patenting behavior earlier in the prosecution process.
Abstract
Focused Deterrence is a crime-reduction strategy that combines an increased probability and severity of punishment with direct communication of consequences to individuals identified as likely offenders. Philadelphia implemented Focused Deterrence in 2013 in response to rising gun violence. We estimate this policy’s effects on crime rates as well as community downstream effects on rental pricing and housing valuations. Using a standard difference-in-difference design, we find that the number of shooting victims declined by 41.3 percent and gun crime incidents fell by 24.2 percent. Total reported crime incidents declined by roughly 13.8 percent, reflecting reductions in both violent and non-violent offenses. This reduction in crime resulted in increases in rental prices between 6.0 to 7.5 percent, and housing values from 3.6 to 7.0 percent. Together, these findings suggest that Focused Deterrence’s crime-reduction effects extend beyond its direct targets, and that this broader improvement in neighborhood safety is capitalized into local housing and rental markets.
Works in Progress
Abstract
This paper investigates whether racial disparities existed in capital sentencing in South Carolina during the early twentieth century. We construct a novel dataset by digitizing the Report of the Attorney General to the General Assembly of South Carolina and county Criminal Journals, allowing us to observe capital case outcomes at a level of geographic and temporal detail not previously available for this period. Our empirical strategy exploits the rotation of judges across judicial circuits, which effectively randomized the assignment of judges to counties at different points in the year, generating plausibly exogenous variation in the judge presiding over a given capital case. Focusing on murder and rape—the principal capital offenses of the period—we examine whether sentencing outcomes varied systematically with the race of the defendant, and whether the race of the victim, and the interaction between defendant and victim race, further shaped these outcomes. By situating this analysis within an era of widespread societal discrimination, the paper contributes historical context to the ongoing discussion of judicial decision-making and racial disparities in the American criminal justice system.
Abstract
This paper investigates how radical innovations—those that disrupt and change existing knowledge and practices—can signal shifts in firm- and industry-level innovation strategies. Using a model that explores the choice between radical and incremental innovation, I examine the relationship between newly invented radical innovations and firms’ innovation strategies. Through an analysis of patent- and firm-level data, I examine the particular effect radical innovation has on firms and industries based on their individual characteristics and technological similarity to the radical innovation.
Research Presentations
Southern Economic Association 96th Annual Meeting Fall 2026
Clemson Industrial Organization Economics Workshop Spring 2026
Clemson Industrial Organization Economics Workshop Fall 2025
Southern Economic Association 95th Annual Meeting Fall 2025
Clemson Industrial Organization Economics Workshop Spring 2025
Clemson Industrial Organization Economics Workshop Fall 2024