Economics of Ideas, Science and Innovation Syllabus (PhD course) — Readings

Economics of Ideas, Science and Innovation Syllabus (PhD course). Aug 2022. https://progress.institute/economics-of-ideas/syllabus/

Readings:

Class 1 Course Overview and Macroeconomic Foundations

Arrow, Kenneth. 1962. “Economic Welfare and the Allocation of Resources for Invention.” In The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity: Economic and Social Factors, pp. 609-625. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jones, Charles I. 2001. Chapter 4 and 5, pp. 78-86 and 96-122 in Introduction to Economic Growth. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Jones, Benjamin F. and Lawrence H. Summers. 2021. “A Calculation of the Social Returns to Innovation.” In Innovation and Public Policy, University of Chicago Press.

Bloom, Nicholas, Mark Schankerman, and John Van Reenen. 2013. “Identifying Technology Spillovers and Product Market Rivalry.” Econometrica 81(4): 1347-1393.

Jones, Benjamin F. 2009. “The Burden of Knowledge and the ‛Death of the Renaissance Man’: Is Innovation Getting Harder?” Review of Economic Studies 76(1): 283-317.

Class 2 Open Science as an Economic Institution

Aghion, Philippe, Mathias Dewatripont, and Jeremy C. Stein. 2008. “Academic Freedom, Private Sector Focus, and the Process of Innovation.” RAND Journal of Economics 39(3): 617-635.

Ahmadpoor, Mohammad, and Benjamin F. Jones. 2017. “The Dual Frontier: Patented Inventions and Prior Scientific Advance.” Science 357(6531): 583-587.

Azoulay, Pierre, Christian Fons-Rosen, and Joshua S. Graff Zivin. 2019. “Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?” American Economic Review 109(8): 2889-2920.

Dasgupta, Partha, and Paul David. 1994. “Towards a New Economics of Science.” Research Policy 23(5): 487-521.

Myers, Kyle. 2020. “The Elasticity of Science.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 12(4): 103-134.

Class 3 Innovation Policies, including the US Patent System

Bloom, Nicholas, John Van Reenen and Heidi Williams. 2019. “A Toolkit of Policies to promote Innovation” Journal of Economic Perspectives 33(3) 163–184

Budish, Eric, Benjamin Roin, and Heidi Williams. 2015. “Do firms underinvest in long-term research? Evidence from cancer clinical trials,” American Economic Review 105(7): 2044-2085.

Galasso, Alberto and Mark Schankerman. 2015. “Patents and Cumulative Innovation: Causal Evidence from the Courts,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 130(1): 317–69.

Gallini, Nancy and Suzanne Scotchmer. 2001. “Intellectual Property: When is it the Best Incentive System?” Innovation Policy and the Economy Volume 2, Adam Jaffe, Josh Lerner and Scott Stern, (editors), Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Lisa L. Ouellette. 2012. “Do Patents Disclose Useful Information?” Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 25(2): 531-593.

Class 4 Contracting and Control Rights for Innovation

Aghion, Philippe, and Jean Tirole. 1994. “The Management of Innovation.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 109(4): 1185-1209.

Azoulay, Pierre, Joshua Graff Zivin, and Gustavo Manso. 2011. “Incentives and Creativity: Evidence from the Academic Life Sciences.” RAND Journal of Economics 42(3): 527-554.

Lerner, Joshua, and Ulrike Malmendier. 2010. “Contractibility and the Design of Research Agreements.” American Economic Review 100(1): 214-246.

Manso, Gustavo. 2011. “Motivating Innovation.” Journal of Finance 66(5): 1823-1860

Class 5 Labor Markets and the Supply of Innovators

Bell, Alexander M., Raj Chetty, Xavier Jaravel, Neviana Petkova, and John Van Reenen. 2019. “Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 134(2): 647-713.

Biasi, Barbara, David J. Deming, and Petra Moser. 2021. “Education and Innovation.” NBER Working Paper #28544.

Doran, K., Gelber, A. and Isen, A., 2022. The effects of high-skilled immigration policy on firms: Evidence from visa lotteries. Journal of Political Economy.

Marx, Matt, Deborah Strumsky, and Lee Fleming. 2009. “Mobility, Skills, and the Michigan Non-Compete Experiment.” Management Science 55 (6): 875–889.

Waldinger, Fabian, 2016. “Bombs, Brains, and Science: The Role of Human and Physical Capital for the Production of Scientific Knowledge,” The Review of Economics and Statistics, vol. 98, no. 5, pp. 811-831, 2016.