Pop-Up Journal on the Returns to R&D

Papers (3)

• The Social Returns to Public R&D

  Andrew J. Fieldhouse, Karel Mertens · 2025 · NBER Working Paper 33780

  Estimates the social returns to nondefense public R&D using narrative identification of appropriations shocks, and finds gross social returns substantially above those previously estimated for private or total R&D.

  doi:10.3386/w33780

• A Calculation of the Social Returns to Innovation

  Benjamin F. Jones, Lawrence H. Summers · 2022 · NBER Working Paper 27863

  Builds an accounting framework relating aggregate innovation investment to productivity growth and welfare, and concludes that average social returns to US innovation investment are very large.

  doi:10.3386/w27863

• Public R&D Investments and Private-sector Patenting: Evidence from NIH Funding Rules

  Pierre Azoulay, Joshua S. Graff Zivin, Danielle Li, Bhaven N. Sampat · 2019 · Review of Economic Studies 86(1)

  Uses idiosyncratic variation in NIH funding rules to show that public research funding produces measurable increases in private-sector patenting.

  doi:10.1093/restud/rdy034