We study how an acquirer's public visibility affects antitrust enforcement in mergers and its real economic consequences. Using a novel dataset linking FTC and DOJ inspection outcomes to news coverage of merger parties, we find that a 10 percent increase in the acquirer's share of industry news coverage raises the likelihood of being flagged by 1.5 to 3 percent. We establish causality using geographical proximity to media outlets as an exogenous source of variation in news coverage. We interpret these results through a political‐accountability framework: higher visibility raises the reputational stakes of enforcement, leading regulators to challenge more visible acquirers. Consistent with this accountability framework, the visibility gradient strengthens during congressional appropriations hearings and disappears in lame-duck periods. It is also substantially stronger in consumer-facing industries, where accountability pressures are highest. Finally, visibility-driven scrutiny has real effects: overlooked low-visibility deals gain market power, while flagged acquirers expand inefficiently and face a higher financial burden. Our results highlight how public salience distorts merger review and generates persistent post-merger inefficiencies.

We show that investors misreact to technological innovations based on their novelty, and that these misreactions distort firms’ subsequent innovation directions. First, using textual measures of novelty, we find that investors underreact to the issuance of novel innovations but overreact to non-novel ones. Novel patent issuance predicts lower risk and positive forecast errors, consistent with non-risk-based mispricing. A model where boundedly-rational investors are uncertain about the true novelty of a patent at issuance explains the empirical patterns well. Second, using sensational news as an exogenous shock to misreaction, we present causal evidence that, after disappointing returns to patent news, novel firms follow up less on current novel technologies, and shift future innovations from novelty-seeking to copycatting when exploring new areas. The findings highlight that investors' misreactions to patent novelty steer innovation away from higher-valued, groundbreaking research.

China's technological progress in recent decades has been viewed with admiration, alarm, and (in some cases) doubt. To better understand the Chinese innovation ecosystem, we compile a dataset of almost 14 million domestic Chinese patent publications. We focus on the subset of critical technologies identified by the U.S. Department of Defense. Several surprising patterns emerge from the data: Chinese patenting is strongly associated with other measures of innovative progress; patents are not concentrated in corporate giants such as Huawei; universities have played a key role in innovation, much greater than state-owned enterprises or government-owned facilities; and fewer than one in ten Chinese critical technology patents involves an inventor with U.S. experience or training. Finally, using four text-based measures of patent quality, we show that the rise of Chinese patenting in critical technologies has not been associated with a decline in quality relative to the U.S. awards. 

We construct a novel dataset linking over 360,000 U.S. utility patents held by public firms to 244,000 products those firms bring to market, using sentence embeddings to measure patent-product similarity and large language models to extract structured product information from unstructured corporate announcements. Using this dataset, we provide the first large-scale quantitative evidence for the innovator's dilemma. Within the same firm, technology class, and year, patents that are more dissimilar from the firm's existing products are substantially less likely to be commercialized and take significantly longer to reach the market when they are. The underutilization of disruptive technologies is concentrated among firms whose revenues depend most heavily on existing products, as the cannibalization hypothesis predicts. We further show that the cannibalization incentive extends upstream into R&D itself: firms with more valuable existing product portfolios generate less disruptive patent portfolios, suggesting that the anticipation of commercialization costs shapes the direction of research. Taken together, these findings imply that incumbent firms not only fail to commercialize disruptive technologies they have already developed, but also redirect their research away from disruptive directions, with consequences for the aggregate pace and direction of technological change.

What drives state regulation of nonbanks? We examine the factors influencing state-level regulation of nonbank financial institutions. As nonbanks—particularly fintech lenders—capture a growing share of the consumer credit market, states have responded with diverse regulatory approaches. To analyze these responses, we construct one of the first comprehensive databases of enforcement actions against nonbanks across 47 states over 20 years. Leveraging this dataset, we find limited evidence that state regulations are primarily motivated by consumer protection or aiding subprime borrowers. Instead, we find evidence suggesting that state regulators may target nonbanks to “protect” state-chartered banks from competition. To explore this further, we investigate the “demand” side, where state-chartered banks lobby to reduce competitive pressure, and the “supply” side, where state regulators respond due to incentives like job prospects or financial repression. Regulators may also aim to maintain financial stability, concerned that excessive competition could lead state-chartered banks to take on riskier behaviors.