No abstract

In this article we examine the rate at which patent applications are granted as a function of the inventor's race and gender. Empirical analysis of more than 3.9 million U.S. applications finds minority and women applicants are significantly less likely to secure a patent relative to the balance of inventors. Further analysis indicates that a portion of this bias is introduced during prosecution at the Patent Office, independent of the quality of the application. Mechanisms underlying these disparities are explored. The article concludes with a discussion of our results and their interaction with patent law, innovation policy, and employment trends.

It is customary to employ surveys to evaluate government services. Race is cited frequently as a source of differences between people in the evaluation of government services. African‐Americans are reported to be more critical of government services than others. However, a possible source of error reported in survey research is response bias due to what is commonly called the race‐of‐interviewer effect: black and white respondents giving different answers as a function of who asks the question. This note investigates, through an experimental design, whether response bias exists in mail surveys. Using two institutions, one historically black and one historically white, residents in a Southern community were asked to evaluate government's response to growth. As expected, initial results affirmed the importance of race. However, additional analysis revealed a more complex role for race. More importantly, the results indicated that citizens may, in fact, take into consideration who asks the question.

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) were originally built on proprietary technology and primarily focused on “up-time” and “safety”. Being isolated from the business environment they were independent islands of networked devices. However, ongoing advancements in business technology, brought with it new possibilities, such as the ability to access data and systems located inside of the previously isolated ICS environments. At this point many Industrial Control Systems (ICS) moved from proprietary technologies, to using the same protocols as business IT systems. This paradigm shift has led to an evolving convergence of business and process control networks, which has generated the effect of increased efficiency and visibility to field operations, but also brought with it new cyber security challenges. Modern technologies contain well known cyber exploits and vulnerabilities which are now inherited in the ICS environment. As a result, ICS environments find themselves directly in the crosshairs of cyber attackers. Effective management of these cyber security challenges and exposures in the ICS environment has emerged as an important and dynamic element in the operational safety, security, and reliability of the infrastructure in the oil & gas industry. Many of the principles for protection and controls used in the enterprise environment should now be adapted to fit the ICS environment. However, requirements within the ICS differ significantly from the enterprise and should be considered. This paper will provide an oil and gas industry insight into cyber security programs and countermeasures, and will explore the similarities and differences between IT and ICS protection and risk management.

No abstract