Innovation policy can be a crucial component of governments' responses to crises. Because speed is a paramount … objective, crisis innovation may also require different policy tools than innovation policy in non-crisis times, raising … distinct questions and tradeoffs. In this paper, we survey the U.S. policy response to two crises where innovation was crucial …

-produced penicillin, antimalarials, and a flu vaccine. We draw on this episode to discuss the economics of crisis innovation. Since the …