The existence of strong spillover' effects of private R&D increases the potential social contribution of R&D but may depress the private incentives to undertake it. R&D consortia offer a potentially effective means of internalizing this externality, and a number of prominent economists have...

Firms invest in scientific research to increase their chances of landing lucrative procurement contracts with the U.S. government. This is an important, but understudied channel through which the government encourages corporate research, particularly when other market mechanisms are...

The establishment and growth of industrial research laboratories is one of the key organizational innovations affecting technological progress in the United States in the 20th century. In this paper, we investigate the rise of industrial research laboratories in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry...

This paper reexamines the limits of the firm in Research and Development (R&D). Using evidence drawn from industrial laboratories we study the causes and effects of R&D sourcing. We begin with the causes of sourcing, finding that Research Joint Ventures (RJVs), the option to purchase and...

We explore the use of patent citations to measure the "basicness" and appropriability of inventions. We propose that the basicness of research underlying an invention can be characterized by the nature of the previous patents cited by an invention; that the basicness of research outcomes relates...

Research Joint Ventures (RJVs) are projects that combine the research resources of different firms. A sample of RJVs supported by the U.S. Advanced Technology Program shows that the projects yield revenues that are far less than costs. Related to this point, the RJVs are subject to...

The returns to face-to-face interactions are of central importance to understanding the determinants of agglomeration. However, the existing literature studying patterns of geographic proximity in patent citations or industrial co-location has struggled to disentangle the benefits of...

We study the relationships between corporate R&D and three components of public science: knowledge, human capital, and invention. We identify the relationships through firm-specific exposure to changes in federal agency R\&D budgets that are driven by the political composition of congressional...

This paper presents a theory of government intervention which provides an explanation for "industrial strategy" policies such as R&D or export subsidies in imperfectly competitive international markets. Each producing country has an incentive to try to capture a greater share of rent-earning...

This paper examines possible consequences of subsidies to R&D and to volume production proposed under the Clinton administration's flat panel display initiative. We do this in the context of a model in which firms behave competitively in the short run, while realizing that their choices of...