Assessing Policy Impact on Chemical Inventions: The Case of the Stockholm Convention

Once companies develop hazardous products which can be dangerous for the environment and human health, it takes very long for regulatory bodies to ban these products. However, very little is known about the impact of regulatory action on firms’ inventive strategies. Using a difference-in-difference approach, I test the impact of regulation on a sample of POP-related patents against a control sample of untreated pesticides. Interestingly, I find that the signature and/or ratification of Stockholm Convention – the UN ban on the use, trade and production of persistent organic pollutants – increases the rate of POP-related invention and new compound patenting, opening up interesting questions about corporate innovative strategies and calling for further research on the nature of the new POP-related inventions.