Marta Morando

We study whether, and how, societal views about which problems are most socially important or worth solving are reflected in the direction of technological progress. We map polarized issues in the U.S. public debate to related technologies and link inventor records to voter registers. 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. These gaps are not explained by differences in inventive ability and persist within organizations. Party-technology alignment has strengthened over the past two decades, alongside rising polarization in U.S. society. This pattern also appears in subsequent innovation: inventors are more likely to build on aligned technologies and less on misaligned ones. These findings suggest that societal views and their polarization are important drivers of technological change, operating in part through inventors’ technology choices, with implications for innovation policy.

How do private and social identities affect occupational choice? We study this question in the energy labor market, where oil and gas firms play a fundamental role in the green transition. We design a novel survey experiment and administer it to first-time job seekers. 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 the allocation of talent, productivity, and the pace of the green transition.