Industrial innovation churns out increasingly unnatural products and technologies amid scientific uncertainty about their harmful effects. We argue that a quick regulatory response to the discovery that certain innovations are harmful is an important indicator for evaluating the performance of an innovation system. Using a unique hand-collected dataset, we explore the temporal geography of regulatory responses as evidenced by the years in which countries introduce bans against leaded petrol, asbestos, DDT, smoking in public places, and plastic bags, as well as introducing the driver’s seatbelt obligation. We find inconsistent regulatory responses by countries across different threats, and that countries’ level of economic development is often not a good predictor of early bans. Moreover, an early introduction of one ban is not strongly related to the relative performance in regard to another ban, which raises possible questions about the coherence of regulatory responses across different threats.

中文翻译：

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石棉、含铅汽油和其他异常：比较各国对不获批准的产品和技术的监管反应

由于其有害影响的科学不确定性，工业创新产生了越来越不自然的产品和技术。我们认为，对发现某些创新有害的快速监管反应是评估创新系统绩效的重要指标。使用独特的手工收集数据集，我们探索了监管响应的时间地理分布，这些年各国禁止使用含铅汽油、石棉、滴滴涕、公共场所吸烟和塑料袋，以及引入司机™ 的安全带义务。我们发现各国对不同威胁的监管反应不一致，而且各国的经济发展水平通常不能很好地预测早期禁令。而且，