Marta Morando

We document that inventors patent and cite technologies aligned with the views of their political party. We link inventors to U.S. voter registration data and map politically polarized issues to technologies. Compared to Republicans, Democrats are one-third more likely to patent technologies addressing climate change mitigation or women's reproductive health and one-third less likely to patent weapons. This holds across economic returns and organization characteristics. Republicans and Democrats are also 20% differently likely to cite these technologies. These findings highlight the importance of inventors' identity—specifically, their party affiliation—in shaping the content and diffusion of their innovation.

How does identity affect occupational choice? We study this question in the energy labor market, as oil and gas firms play a fundamental role in the green transition. We design and administer a survey experiment to job seekers entering the labor market for the first time. We find that individuals assign positive amenity value to working for a company whose core business aligns with their environmental identity and disamenity value to those that conflict with it. Respondents with green identities are willing to forgo 20% of their salary to work in a renewable energy firm rather than a generic energy company, and require a 15% wage premium to accept a job in an oil and gas firm. This pattern also holds when individuals apply to work in teams focusing on clean energy within these firms. To isolate social-image effects, we randomize whether job choices are private or publicly disclosed. Social image concerns significantly influence occupational choices, especially for jobs perceived as socially stigmatized. We develop a model of occupational choice in which individuals have private preferences over jobs and derive utility from aligning with social norms. In structural simulations, we study how the social environment shapes labor market inequality and the pace of the green transition.