There is growing public interest in alternatives to intellectual property including, but not limited to, prizes and government grants. We argue that there is no single best mechanism for supporting research. Rather, mechanisms can only be compared within specific creative environments. We...

This paper investigates changes in the output and productivity of research and development activities in Japanese manufacturing firms over the 1980s and 1990s. Evidence from aggregate patent and R&D statistics and a micro-level analysis of R&D productivity at the firm-level suggest that there...

How do innovation and education policy affect individual career choice and aggregate productivity? This paper analyzes the various layers that connect R&D subsidies and higher education policy to productivity growth. We put the development of scarce talent and career choice at the center of a...

Concern exists that public funding of science is increasingly risk averse. Funders have addressed this concern by soliciting the submission of high-risk research to either regular or specially designed programs. Little evidence, however, has been gathered to examine the extent to which such...

Research which explores unchartered waters has a high potential for major impact but also carries a higher uncertainty of having impact. Such explorative research is often described as taking a novel approach. This study examines the complex relationship between pursuing a novel approach and...

This article examines the relationship between Research & Development (R&D) funding and the production of knowledge by academic chemists. Using articles published, either raw counts or adjusted for quality, we find a strong, positive causal effect of funding on knowledge production. This effect...

We introduce firm and worker heterogeneity into a model of innovation-driven endogenous growth. Individuals who differ in ability sort into either a research sector or a manufacturing sector that produces differentiated goods. Each research project generates a new variety of the differentiated...

Using a comprehensive dataset of all medium and large enterprises in China between 1998 and 2007, we show that industrial policies allocated to competitive sectors or that foster competition in a sector increase productivity growth. We measure competition using the Lerner Index and include as...

The generation and implementation of ideas, or knowledge, is crucial for economic performance. We study this process in a model of endogenous growth with frictions. Productivity increases with knowledge, which advances via innovation, and with the exchange of ideas from those who generate them...

Some technologies save lives -- new vaccines, new surgical techniques, safer highways. Others threaten lives -- pollution, nuclear accidents, global warming, the rapid global transmission of disease, and bioengineered viruses. How is growth theory altered when technologies involve life and death...