Many studies have estimated the effect of circumstances on income acquisition. Perhaps surprisingly, the fraction of inequality attributable to circumstances is usually quite small - in the advanced democracies, on the order of 20%. One reason for this is the lack of data on circumstance...

The paper investigates the reaction of public R&D spending on economic crises. We are interested in two counteracting motives: On the one hand, public R&D spending can be seen as a means to fight the crisis, and governments may decide to increase their R&D budgets. On the other hand, a crisis...