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Afroza Alam

Afroza Alam
Current Position

since 9/20

Economist in the Department of Laws, Regulations and Factor Markets

Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) – Member of the Leibniz Association

Research Interests
  • labour economics
  • innovation
  • applied microeconomics

Afroza Alam is part of the DPE-Programme since 2020. Her research focuses on innovation and digital economics, applied microeconomics, applied macroeconomics, and labour economics.

Afroza Alam received her bachelor's degree from Asian University for Women in Chittagong, Bangladesh and a master's degree from University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa and Paris University 13 in France. She also spent a semester at the Berlin School of Economics and Law and worked as a research analyst at the World Bank.

Your contact

Afroza Alam
Afroza Alam
- Department Laws, Regulations and Factor Markets
Send Message +49 345 7753-753 LinkedIn profile

Working Papers

cover_DP_2026-06.jpg

Patents, Firm Rents, and Worker Compensation: Causal Evidence from Quasi-random Patent Allocation

Afroza Alam André Diegmann

in: IWH Discussion Papers, No. 6, 2026

Abstract

This paper provides new causal evidence on how patent allowances affect firms and their employees based on quasi-random assignment of patent applications to examiners. Exploiting employer-employee records with newly linked German firm data and web-scraped patent documents, we show that patent-induced shocks reduce firm exit, improve productivity, and increase wages, with rent-sharing elasticities between 0.10 and 0.21. Wage gains are broadly observed across occupational tasks, with high heterogeneity: managers benefit disproportionately in publicly traded firms, whereas broader wage increases accrue to workers in non-traded firms. Our findings highlight the role of institutional features and firm organization in shaping how rents are shared.

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