PhD Seminar Series: The Uneven Impact of Public Data on Firm Investment: Evidence from Cancer Genome Mapping

The Uneven Impact of Public Data on Firm Investment: Evidence from Cancer Genome Mapping

Speaker: Rohin Vrajesh (Bocconi University)

Abstract: Public scientific mapping initiatives are designed to reduce uncertainty and accelerate innovation, yet their distributional consequences across domains remain unclear. We examine how The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) - a large-scale public genome mapping effort - reshapes private clinical trial investment across cancer types. Using ClinicalTrials.gov data and a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that genome mapping does not increase overall trial activity. Instead, it induces a substantial reallocation of investment away from rare cancers and toward common cancers. Firm-level analyses reveal systematic heterogeneity: firms with broader prior clinical trial experience reduce post-mapping investment, while firms with rare-domain specialization attenuate the decline in rare cancer trials. These findings suggest that public scientific mapping amplifies specialist–generalist sorting rather than uniformly expanding innovation, highlighting how technological shocks can reshape the cross-domain allocation of private R&D investment.