What’s the return on government funding for research? There are a few places in the academic literature you can look to for insight. Jones and Summers (2021) uses a hypothetical thought experiment to make the case that, on average, every dollar of R&D spent probably generates several dollars in benefits via its long-run impact on economic growth (see What are the returns to R&D? for more discussion). But that result applies only to R&D in general, government and non-government, bu...
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What’s the return on government funding for research? There are a few places in the academic literature you can look to for insight. Jones and Summers (2021) uses a hypothetical thought experiment to make the case that, on average, every dollar of R&D spent probably generates several dollars in benefits via its long-run impact on economic growth (see What are the returns to R&D? for more discussion). But that result applies only to R&D in general, government and non-government, bu...
Much of the world’s population lives in countries in which little research happens. Is this a problem? According to classical economic models of the “ideas production function,” ideas are universal; ideas developed in one place are applicable everywhere. This is probably true enough for some contexts; but not all. In this post we’ll look at four domains - agriculture, health, the behavioral sciences, and program evaluation research - where new discoveries do not seem to have universal ap...
New Things Under the Sun
What’s the return on government funding for research? There are a few places in the academic literature you can look to for insight. Jones and Summers (2021) uses a hypothetical thought experiment to make the case that, on average, every dollar of R&D spent probably generates several dollars in benefits via its long-run impact on economic growth (see What are the returns to R&D? for more discussion). But that result applies only to R&D in general, government and non-government, bu...
