Speaker: Netanel Ben-Porath
Title: Disruptive Regulation: The Safety-Productivity Frontier in Technological Sectors
Abstract: Governments often impose safety standards on new technologies to protect society from potential harms. How do such regulations shape the quality of technological products? We examine this question in the pesticide industry, where products face an inherent trade-off between the range of pests they target and their toxicity to non-target organisms. Between 1990 and 2009, the EPA issued hundreds of Reregistration Eligibility Decisions on a staggered, substance-by-substance basis, generating sharp shifts in safety standards across different parts of the industry. We find that regulation stimulated innovation in affected markets, increasing the total number of products. Newly introduced products became safer and more effective at controlling target pests, but each targeted a narrower range of pests. Regulation also redirected innovation toward large domestic markets and away from smaller and international ones.
Maggie Hendrix
(847) 467-7263
Email