Synopses & Reviews
As the cost of storing, sharing, and analyzing data has decreased, economic activity has become increasingly digital. But while the effects of digital technology and improved digital communication have been explored in a variety of contexts, the impact on economic activityandmdash;from consumer and entrepreneurial behavior to the ways in which governments determine policyandmdash;is less well understood.
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Economic Analysis of the Digital Economy explores the economic impact of digitization, with each chapter identifying a promising new area of research. The Internet is one of the key drivers of growth in digital communication, and the first set of chapters discusses basic supply-and-demand factors related to access. Later chapters discuss new opportunities and challenges created by digital technology and describe some of the most pressing policy issues. As digital technologies continue to gain in momentum and importance, it has become clear that digitization has features that do not fit well into traditional economic models. This suggests a need for a better understanding of the impact of digital technology on economic activity, and Economic Analysis of the Digital Economy brings together leading scholars to explore this emerging area of research.
Synopsis
While the importance of innovation to economic development is widely understood, the conditions conducive to it remain the focus of much attention. This volume offers new theoretical and empirical contributions to fundamental questions relating to the economics of innovation and technological change while revisiting the findings of a classic book. Central to the development of new technologies are institutional environments, and among the topics discussed here are the roles played by universities and other nonprofit research institutions and the ways in which the allocation of funds between the public and private sectors affects innovation. Other essays examine the practice of open research and how the diffusion of information technology influences the economics of knowledge accumulation. Analytically sophisticated and broad in scope, this book addresses a key topic at a time when economic growth is all the more topical.
Synopsis
There is a small and growing literature that explores the impact of digitization in a variety of contexts, but its economic consequences, surprisingly, remain poorly understood. This volume aims to set the agenda for research in the economics of digitization, with each chapter identifying a promising area of research. Economics of Digitization identifies urgent topics with research already underway that warrant further exploration from economists. In addition to the growing importance of digitization itself, digital technologies have some features that suggest that many well-studied economic models may not apply and, indeed, so many aspects of the digital economy throw normal economics in a loop. Economics of Digitization will be one of the first to focus on the economic implications of digitization and to bring together leading scholars in the economics of digitization to explore emerging research.
Synopsis
In 1945, Vannevar Bush, founder of Raytheon and one-time engineering dean at MIT, delivered a report to the president of the United States that argued for the importance of public support for science, and the importance of science for the future of the nation. The report,
Science: The Endless Frontier, set America on a path toward strong and well-funded institutions of science, creating an intellectual architecture that still defines scientific endeavor today.
In The Changing Frontier, Adam B. Jaffe and Benjamin Jones bring together a group of prominent scholars to consider the changes in science and innovation in the ensuing decades. The contributors take on such topics as changes in the organization of scientific research, the geography of innovation, modes of entrepreneurship, and the structure of research institutions and linkages between science and innovation. An important analysis of where science stands today, The Changing Frontier will be invaluable to practitioners and policy makers alike.
About the Author
Adam B. Jaffe is director and a senior fellow of the research institute Motu Economic and Public Policy Research, the Sir Douglas Myers Visiting Professor at Auckland University Business School, and a research associate of the NBER.Benjamin F. Jones is the Gordon and Llura Gund Family Professor in Entrepreneurship and professor of strategy at Northwestern Universityandrsquo;s Kellogg School of Management. He is also a faculty affiliate at the Center for International Economics and Development and the Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University, where he also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Political Science. He is a research associate of the NBER
Table of Contents
The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity Revisited
Josh Lerner and Scott Stern, editors
Introduction
Josh Lerner and Scott Stern
I. Panel Discussion: The Impact of the 1962 Rate and Direction Volume, a Retrospective
Why was Rate and Direction So Important?
Nathan Rosenberg and Scott Stern
Some Features of Research by Economists on Technological Change Foreshadowed by The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity
Richard R. Nelson
The Economics of Inventive Activity over Fifty Years
Kenneth J. Arrow
II. The University-Industry Interface
1. Funding Scientific Knowledge: Selection, Disclosure, and the Public-Private Portfolio
Joshua S. Gans and Fiona Murray
Comment: Suzanne Scotchmer
2. The Diffusion of Scientific Knowledge across Time and Space: Evidence from Professional Transitions for the Superstars of Medicine
Pierre Azoulay, Joshua S. Graff Zivin, and Bhaven N. Sampat
Comment: Adam B. Jaffe
3. The Effects of the Foreign Fulbright Program on Knowledge Creation in Science and Engineering
Shulamit Kahn and Megan MacGarvie
Comment: Paula E. Stephan
III. Market Structure and Innovation
4. Schumpeterian Competition and Diseconomies of Scope: Illustrations from the Histories of Microsoft and IBM
Timothy F. Bresnahan, Shane Greenstein, and Rebecca M. Henderson
Comment: Giovanni Dosi
5. How Entrepreneurs Affect the Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity
Daniel F. Spulber
Comment: Luis Cabral
6. Diversity and Technological Progress
Daron Acemoglu
Comment: Samuel Kortum
7. Competition and Innovation: Did Arrow Hit the Bulland#8217;s Eye?
Carl Shapiro
Comment: Michael D. Whinston
IV. The Sources and Motivations of Innovators
8. Did Plant Patents Create the American Rose?
Petra Moser and Paul W. Rhode
Comment: Jeffrey Furman
9. The Rate and Direction of Invention in the British Industrial Revolution:and#160; Incentives and Institutions
Ralf R. Meisenzahl and Joel Mokyr
Comment: David C. Mowery
10. The Confederacy of Heterogeneous Software Organizations and Heterogeneous Developers:and#160; Field Experimental Evidence on Sorting and Worker Effort
Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani
Comment: Iain M. Cockburn
V. Panel Discussion: Innovation Incentives, Institutions, and Economic Growth
The Innovation Fetish among the Economoi: Introduction to the Panel on Innovation Incentives, Institutions, and Economic Growth
Paul A. David
Innovation Process and Policy: What Do We Learn from New Growth Theory?
Philippe Aghion
VI. The Social Impact of Innovation
11. The Consequences of Financial Innovation: A Counterfactual Research Agenda
Josh Lerner and Peter Tufano
Comment: Antoinette Schoar
12. The Adversity/Hysteresis Effect: Depression-Era Productivity Growth in the US Railroad Sector
Alexander J. Field
Comment: William Kerr
13. Generality, Recombination, and Reuse
Timothy F. Bresnahan
Comment: Benjamin Jones
VII. Panel Discussion: The Art and Science of Innovation Policy
The Art and Science of Innovation Policy: Introduction
Bronwyn H. Hall
Putting Economic Ideas Back into Innovation Policy
R. Glenn Hubbard
Why Is It So Difficult to Translate Innovation Economics into Useful and Applicable Policy Prescriptions?
Dominique Foray
Can the Nelson-Arrow Paradigm Still Be the Beacon of Innovation Policy?
Manuel Trajtenberg
Contributors
Author Index
Subject Index