The Chicago Booth Review, a publication by the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, recently cited a working paper co-authored by Brattle Associate Haris Tabakovic and Chicago Booth Professor Thomas Wollmann in an article addressing the transfer of people between government and industry positions, and new revelations in data indicating the potentially harmful effects of this "revolving door" of employment.
The article references Mr. Tabakovic and Professor Wollmann's study, "Effects of Regulatory Capture: Evidence from Patent Examiners," which investigates whether the behavior of US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) staff, 8,350 of whom are patent examiners that review patent applications, changes when they move from government positions to industry positions. Their findings indicate that the patent examiners that move on to industry positions granted more patents than their peers, and the authors even observed a trend indicating more patents were granted to the companies that eventually hired them.
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