Jump to ContentJump to Main Navigation
The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity Revisited - Chicago Scholarship Online
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content.

The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity Revisited

Josh Lerner and Scott Stern

Abstract

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 theoretical and empirical contributions to 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 pr ... More

Keywords: innovation, economic development, economics of innovation, technological change, institutional environments, nonprofit research, funds, public sector, private sector, knowledge accumulation

Bibliographic Information

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780226473031
Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: February 2013 DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226473062.001.0001

Authors

Affiliations are at time of print publication.

Josh Lerner, editor

Scott Stern, editor

Show Summary Details

subscribe or login to access all content.

Contents

View:

Front Matter

Title Pages

[UNTITLED]

National Bureau of Economic Research

Introduction

Josh Lerner and Scott Stern

I Panel Discussion: The Impact of the 1962 Rate and Direction Volume, a Retrospective

1. 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

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

3. The Effects of the Foreign Fulbright Program on Knowledge Creation in Science and Engineering

Shulamit Kahn and Megan MacGarvie

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

5 How Entrepreneurs Affect the Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity

Daniel F. Spulber

6. Diversity and Technological Progress

Daran Acemoglu

7 Competition and Innovation: Did Arrow Hit the Bull's Eye?

Carl Shapiro

IV The Sources and Motivations of Innovators

8 Did Plant Patents Create the American Rose?

Petra Moser and Paul W. Rhode

9 The Rate and Direction of Invention in the British Industrial Revolution: Incentives and Institutions

Ralf R. Meisenzahl and Joel Mokyr

10 The Confederacy of Heterogeneous Software Organizations and Heterogeneous Developers: Field Experimental Evidence on Sorting and Worker Effort

Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani

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

12 The Adversity/Hysteresis Effect: Depression-Era Productivity Growth in the US Railroad Sector

Alexander J. Field

13 Generality, Recombination, and Reuse

Timothy F. Bresnahan

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

End Matter

Contributors

Author Index

Subject Index