This paper uses a large language model to develop an ex-ante measure of the commercial potential of scientific findings. In addition to validating the measure against the typical holdout sample, we validate it externally against 1.) the progression of scientific findings through a major...

This paper contributes to the literature on innovation policies and institutional theory on conditions for effective institutional changes. The "three rights" reform of 26 universities and the mixed ownership reform of Southwest Jiaotong University are important explorations made by China in...

We use the U.S. patent data merged with firm-level datasets to establish new facts about the role of mega firms in generating "novel patents"--innovations that introduce new combinations of technology components for the first time. While the importance of mega firms in novel patents had been...

We analyze how expropriation risk reduces incentives for innovation and reallocates resources from the innovative sector, building on Romer's(1990) model. Our framework predicts the R&D expenditure, the share of human capital in R&D, the number of patents, technical progress, and economic growth...

Using dissertation research topics found in the EconLit database and large-scale algorithmic methods that identify author demographics based on names, we explore the link between race and ethnicity and fields of economic research. We find that underrepresented racial and ethnic minority (URM)...

Using the EconLit dissertation database and large-scale algorithmic methods that identify author demographics from names, we investigate the connection between the gender of economics dissertators and dissertation topics. Despite stagnation in the share of women among economics Ph.D.s in recent...

This paper evaluates claims about large macroeconomic implications of new advances in AI. It starts from a task-based model of AI's effects, working through automation and task complementarities. So long as AI's microeconomic effects are driven by cost savings/productivity improvements at the...

Laboratory experiments find a robust relationship between decision times and perceived values of alternatives. This paper investigates how these findings translate to experts' decision making and information acquisition in the field. In a stylized model of expert choice between two alternatives,...

Information flows, and thus information technology (IT) are central to the structure of firms and markets. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we provide firm-level evidence that increases in IT intensity are associated with increases in firm size and concentration in both employment and...

As more and more activities in the economy become digitized, analytics and data-driven decision-making (DDD) are becoming increasingly important. The adoption of analytics and DDD has been slower in small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) compared to large firms, and reliable causal estimates of the...