Third Innovation Policy and the Economy Program Set

While some practitioners have centered themselves on running programs and shoring up budgets during the present fiscal crisis, other efforts are underway, including that of the Innovation Policy and the Economy (IPE) group of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).



The IPE group is presenting five papers developed by leading academic researchers on April 16 at its annual forum in Washington, D.C. The papers, to be published in an annual series by NBER, will be open to discussion by policymakers and those interested in the interaction between public policy and innovation who typically attend the half-day event. The papers include:



Short-term America Revisited? Boom & Bust in the Venture Capital Industry and the Impact on Innovation by Paul Gompers and Joshua Lerner, Harvard University; Intellectual Property, Strategic Behavior and Economic Growth by Dennis Carlton and Rob Gertner, University of Chicago; Federal Support for R&D in the Antiterrorism Era by Roger Noll, Stanford University; Encouraging the Diffusion of Drugs into the Third World: Patents and other Incentives by Jenny Lanjouw, Yale University; and Technological Change and Economic Development by Jeff Sachs, Harvard University.



On a related note, Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume Two recently was released and contains several topical papers to the tech-based economic development field: Some Economic Aspects of Antitrust Analysis in Dynamically Competitive Industries by David S. Evans and Richard Schmalensee; 2) Intellectual Property: When Is It the Best Incentive System? by Nancy Gallini and Suzanne Scotchmer (see the 8/17/01 Digest for an article; 3) Government Support for Commercial R&D: Lessons from the Israeli Experience by Manual Trajtenberg; 4) Prospects for an Information-Technology-Led Productivity Surge by Timothy F. Bresnahan; and 5) Do We Have a "New" Macroeconomy? by J. Bradford DeLong.



Volume One, which covered the IPE group's inaugural 2000 forum, is one of the more popular titles in the SSTI catalog. Both volumes can be purchased from NBER or SSTI. Admission to this year's forum in D.C. is free, but advanced registration is required. Those interested in attending should contact Rob Shannon at rshannon@nber.org or (617) 868-3900.