The conventional wisdom among political economists holds that domestic institutions determine national innovation rates. However, after decades of research, there is still no agreement on precisely which domestic institutions matter or exactly how they affect innovation rates. Anecdotal...

Are politically decentralized states better at fostering long-run technological innovation than centralized states? Societies with decentralized governments are widely seen as agile, competitive, and well structured to adapt to innovation's gale of creative destruction. Meanwhile, centralized...

This conclusion attempts to answer three sets of questions regarding our experiment in cross-field collaboration: What did we find and were these findings cohesive? What did our findings add to the debate? What are the implications of our findings, and, more importantly, what's next? It suggests...

Although never rigorously tested, it has become a sort of accepted wisdom amongst social scientists that government decentralization offers key advantages for innovators. Decentralized governments are widely seen as agile, competitive, and well structured to adapt to innovation’s gale of...

Why are some countries more technologically innovative than others? The dominant explanation amongst political-economists is that domestic institutions determine national innovation rates. However, after decades of research, there is still no agreement on precisely how this happens, exactly...

Does a society's culture affect its rate of inventive activity? This article analyzes several independent datasets of culture and innovation from 62 countries spanning more than two decades. It finds that most measures of individualism have a strong, significant, and positive effect on...