front cover of The Changing Frontier
The Changing Frontier
Rethinking Science and Innovation Policy
Edited by Adam B. Jaffe and Benjamin F. Jones
University of Chicago Press, 2015
In 1945, Vannevar Bush, founder of Raytheon and one-time engineering dean at MIT, delivered a report to the president of the United States that argued for the importance of public support for science, and the importance of science for the future of the nation. The report, Science: The Endless Frontier, set America on a path toward strong and well-funded institutions of science, creating an intellectual architecture that still defines scientific endeavor today.

In The Changing Frontier, Adam B. Jaffe and Benjamin Jones bring together a group of prominent scholars to consider the changes in science and innovation in the ensuing decades. The contributors take on such topics as changes in the organization of scientific research, the geography of innovation, modes of entrepreneurship, and the structure of research institutions and linkages between science and innovation. An important analysis of where science stands today, The Changing Frontier will be invaluable to practitioners and policy makers alike.
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front cover of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy
Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy
Volume 1
Edited by Josh Lerner and Scott Stern
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2022
Entrepreneurship and innovation are widely recognized as key drivers of long-term economic growth. Understanding the forces that influence them is essential for policy design. Building on the twenty-year legacy of the NBER Innovation Policy and the Economy series, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy showcases recent research on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship policy. The volume reports on five research projects. First, leveraging detailed data from the Business Formation Statistics, John Haltiwanger documents a striking uptick in new business formation during the pandemic, and considers the future economic impact of this renewed rate of business dynamism. The next two chapters focus on disparities in the degree of inclusion of women and people of color in innovation and entrepreneurship. Lisa Cook, Janet Gerson, and Jennifer Kuan examine the history of unequal access to education, training, and the practice and commercialization of invention, and the subsequent loss in innovative capacity and productivity. They also consider the potential effects of policies that address these inequalities. Mercedes Delgado and Fiona Murray complement this analysis by characterizing and analyzing the gender gap in patented innovation, including the substantial variation in inclusion of women across locations, industries, and individual firms. The remaining chapters focus on the organization of research and commercialization. Chiara Franzoni, Paula Stephan, and Reinhilde Veugelers consider the operation of current research funding systems with regard to risky research projects. They also describe the consequences of documented biases against novelty in funding decisions in the context of research on mRNA technology. Drawing on historical lessons from World War II as well as current analysis of innovation policy during COVID-19, Daniel Gross and Bhaven Sampat consider the unique challenges that arise when a crisis necessitates unusually rapid innovation and the deployment, at scale, of research findings.
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front cover of Innovation Policy and the Economy 2007
Innovation Policy and the Economy 2007
Volume 8
Edited by Adam B. Jaffe, Josh Lerner, and Scott Stern
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2008

Innovation Policy and the Economy provides a forum for research on the interactions among public policy, the innovation process, and the economy. The distinguished contributors cover all types of policy that affect the ability of an economy to achieve scientific and technological progress or that affect the impact of science and technology on economic growth. Among the issues covered in Volume 8 are policy challenges at the university-industry interface, the role of innovation and experimentation in the net neutrality debate, and the trade-offs in establishing the scope of patent rights or limitations on patent pools.

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front cover of Innovation Policy and the Economy 2008
Innovation Policy and the Economy 2008
Volume 9
Edited by Josh Lerner and Scott Stern
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2009

This volume provides a forum for research on the interactions among public policy, the innovation process, and the economy. Issues covered in Volume 9 include Congressional R&D spending on the physical sciences, intellectual property as a bargaining environment; pricing patents, and market design and innovation.

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front cover of Innovation Policy and the Economy 2009
Innovation Policy and the Economy 2009
Volume 10
Edited by Josh Lerner and Scott Stern
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2010
Innovation Policy and the Economy provides a forum for research on the interactions among public policy, the innovation process, and the economy. The distinguished contributors cover all types of  policy that affect the ability of an economy to acheive scientific technological progress or that affect the impact of science and technology on economic growth. Issues covered in Volume 10 are the impact of alternative approaches for offering incentives for innovation, innovation policy and entrepreneurship in international perspective, and the impact of university patenting and licensing activities on university research.achieve
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front cover of Innovation Policy and the Economy, 2010
Innovation Policy and the Economy, 2010
Volume 11
Edited by Josh Lerner and Scott Stern
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2010

front cover of Innovation Policy and the Economy, 2012
Innovation Policy and the Economy, 2012
Volume 13
Edited by Josh Lerner and Scott Stern
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2013
There is considerable debate regarding the implications of technological change for economic policy and the appropriate policies and programs regarding research, innovation, and the commercialization of new technology. This debate has intensified as policy makers have focused on new sources of innovation and growth in light of the continuing economic downturn and the associated focus on enhancing employment and growth. Innovation Policy and the Economy provides an ongoing forum for the presentation of research on the interactions among public policy, the innovation process, and the economy. Papers in this volume include a consideration of the complex set of innovation-policy challenges that arise in managing publicly funded research, an examination of the increasingly visible role of philanthropic funding for science, a look at the increasingly contentious issue of public funding of growth-oriented entrepreneurship, and two papers that turn their attention to the evaluation of recent federal policy changes as the result of the America Invents Act and the America Competes Act.
 

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front cover of Innovation Policy and the Economy 2013
Innovation Policy and the Economy 2013
Volume 14
Edited by Josh Lerner and Scott Stern
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2014
Appreciation of the importance of innovation to the economy has increased over the past decade. There is an active debate regarding the implications of technological change for economic policy and the appropriate policies and programs regarding research, innovation, and the commercialization of new technology. This debate has only intensified as policymakers focus on new sources of innovation and growth in light of the recent economic downturn and the associated focus on enhancing employment and growth. Four of the five papers in this year’s volume highlight the increasing role of the Internet and digitization in our understanding of the changing nature of innovation and entrepreneurship, and the impact of innovation policy. The first offers an overview of the impact of “Big Data” on the ability to conduct novel types of measurement and research in economics and related fields. The second highlights the increasingly sophisticated and creative research designs that have been used to evaluate the interplay between piracy, the availability of legitimate digital channels, and the impact of anti-piracy enforcement efforts. The third paper provides an overview of the rapidly emerging area of crowdfunding. The fourth addresses the underpinnings of much of the digital economy by focusing on the institutional logic of standard-setting organizations and the conditions that allow standard-setting bodies to function and achieve their objectives. The final paper focuses on the interplay between geographic clusters, entrepreneurship, and innovation.
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front cover of Innovation Policy and the Economy 2014
Innovation Policy and the Economy 2014
Volume 15
Edited by William R. Kerr, Josh Lerner, and Scott Stern
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2016
The fifteenth volume of Innovation Policy and the Economy is the first to focus on a single theme: high-skilled immigration to the United States. The first paper is the product of a long-term research effort on the impact of immigration to the United States of Russian mathematicians beginning around 1990 as the Soviet Union collapsed. The second paper describes how obtaining a degree from a US undergraduate university can open an important pathway for immigrants to participate in the US labor market in IT occupations. The third paper considers the changing nature of postdoctoral positions in science departments, which are disproportionately held by immigrant researchers. The fourth paper considers the role of US firms in high-skilled immigration. The last paper describes how strong growth in global scientific and technological knowledge production has reduced the share of world scientific activity in the United States, increased the immigrant proportion of scientists and engineers at US universities and firms, and fostered cross-border collaborations for US scientists.
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front cover of Innovation Policy and the Economy 2015
Innovation Policy and the Economy 2015
Volume 16
Edited by William R. Kerr, Josh Lerner, and Scott Stern
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2016
The papers in the sixteenth volume of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Innovation Policy and the Economy offer insights into the changing landscape of innovation by highlighting recent developments in the financing of innovation and entrepreneurship and in the economics of innovation and intellectual property. The first chapter, by Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, explores the process of experimentation in the context of financing of technology start-ups by venture capitalists. The second, by Yael Hochberg, also analyzes the role of entrepreneurial experimentation by systematically examining the rise of start-up accelerators. The third chapter, by Heidi Williams, studies the relationship between the strength of intellectual property rights and innovation. The fourth paper, by Fiona Scott Morton and Carl Shapiro discusses recent changes to the patent system and whether they align the rewards from intellectual property with the marginal contributions made by innovators and other stakeholders. The final chapter, by Karim Lakhani and Kevin Boudreau, focuses on the potential use of field innovation experiments and contests to inform innovation policy and management. Together, these essays continue to highlight the importance of economic theory and empirical analysis in innovation policy research.
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front cover of Innovation Policy and the Economy, 2016
Innovation Policy and the Economy, 2016
Volume 17
Edited by Shane M. Greenstein, Joshua Lerner, and Scott Stern
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2017
The seventeenth volume of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Innovation Policy and the Economy provides an accessible forum for bringing the work of leading academic researchers to an audience of policymakers and those interested in the interaction between public policy and innovation. In the first chapter, Joel Waldfogel discusses how reduced costs of production have resulted in a “Golden Age of Television,” arguing that this development has gone underappreciated. The second chapter, by Marc Rysman and Scott Schuh, discusses the prospects for innovation in payment systems, including mobile payments, faster payment systems, and digital currencies. In the third chapter, Catherine Tucker and Amalia Miller analyze the consequences of patient data becoming virtually costless to store, share, and individualize, showing how data management and privacy issues have become a key factor in health policy. The fourth chapter, by Michael Luca, examines how online marketplaces have proliferated over the past decade, evolving far beyond the pioneers such as eBay and Amazon. In the fifth chapter, Tim Bresnahan and Pai-Ling Yin characterize information and communication technologies in the workplace, addressing how wages vary with increasing demand for smart managers and professionals, and workers with organizational participation skills.
 
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front cover of Innovation Policy and the Economy, 2017
Innovation Policy and the Economy, 2017
Volume 18
Edited by Joshua Lerner and Scott Stern
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2018
The eighteenth annual volume of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Innovation Policy and the Economy focuses on research that explores the interplay between new technologies and organizational structures, such as networks and corporations. In the first chapter, Glenn Ellison and Sara Fisher Ellison explore how consumer search in a technology-mediated marketplace can affect the incentives for firms to engage in price obfuscation. In the second chapter, Aaron Chatterji focuses on the role of innovation in American primary and secondary education (K–12), emphasizing recent evidence on the efficacy of classroom technologies. The third chapter, by economic sociologist Olav Sorenson, considers how information, influence, and resources flow through innovation networks. The last two chapters focus on how corporate organizational structures influence innovation and dynamism. In the fourth chapter, Andreas Nilsson and David Robinson develop a synthetic framework for understanding the emergence and choices of social entrepreneurs and socially responsible firms. In the fifth chapter, Steven Kaplan argues that there is little empirical evidence to support the common claim that investor pressure for short-term financial results leads U.S. companies to systematically underinvest in long-term capital expenditures and R&D.
 
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front cover of Innovation Policy and the Economy, 2018
Innovation Policy and the Economy, 2018
Volume 19
Edited by Josh Lerner and Scott Stern
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2019
This volume highlights the interaction between public policy and innovation. The first chapter documents the dramatic globalization of R&D and how this development has affected the efforts of  U.S. multinationals to operate on the global technology frontier. The next chapter synthesizes research on the impact of trade shocks on innovation and explains how these shocks’ effects depend on the firms, industries, and countries affected. The third chapter examines the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) model of research management—an approach to funding and managing high-risk R&D—and offers a method for diagnosing which research efforts are “ARPA-able.” Next is a study of the Orphan Drug Act and the key changes in the U.S. healthcare landscape and in drug discovery and development since its passage in 1983. The next two chapters focus on artificial intelligence (AI). One describes how AI diffuses through the economy and discusses implications for economic inequality, antitrust, and intellectual property. The other investigates issues surrounding firm competition and labor force participation, such as data portability and a Universal Basic Income, and evaluates ways to address these issues.
 
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front cover of Innovation Policy and the Economy, 2019
Innovation Policy and the Economy, 2019
Volume 20
Edited by Josh Lerner and Scott Stern
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2020
The chapters in this twentieth volume of Innovation Policy and the Economy present research on the interactions among public policy, the innovation process, and the economy. One explores changes in the ability of the U.S. to attract talented foreign workers and the role of sponsoring institutions in shaping immigration policy. Another explains how the division of innovative labor between research universities and corporate labs affected productivity growth and the transformation of knowledge into new products and processes. A third reviews different innovation policies and their performance in the pharmaceutical sector. Next is a chapter on the effects of competition policy on innovation, “creative destruction,” and economic growth. A fifth chapter studies how experimental policy design can be a cost-effective way to attain program goals. The last chapter examines geographic disparities in innovation, joblessness, and technological dynamism and studies how reallocation of grants and geographically targeted entrepreneurship policy could affect labor supply and welfare.
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