Testing the Effects of Culture on Institutional Effectiveness and National Innovation Rates

该项目调查了民族文化对科技政策和机构有效性的影响。过去的研究表明，特定的文化特征可能会在某些政治或经济条件下(例如，高度民主)促进创新，而其他特征可能在其他条件下更有效(例如，威权政权)。这项研究的结果很重要：如果民族文化很重要，那么仅仅为研发、工业基础设施和促进创业活动预算更多资金，可能不足以提高一个国家的国家创新率，因为这个国家的根本文化价值观与创新活动背道而驰。知识价值：这项拟议研究的关键创新是考察文化如何对创新活动、科学活动和知识产权产生影响。现有的文化创新研究大多使用企业或个人的定性案例研究，这些研究的概括性有限。本研究运用统计学方法，分析了不同文化价值观、科学政策和制度与国家S科技绩效之间的关系。它分析了数十个国家20年来的数据，使用最近开发的几个独立数据集对自变量和因变量进行三角测量。这项研究还对构成先前研究中遗漏变量偏差的来源的经济变量进行了控制。总之，它提供了对多个国家在很长一段时间内国家创新率差异的新见解，从而有助于为关于内生经济增长和高科技国家竞争力的辩论提供信息该项目有助于解释为什么在一个国家有效的政策和机构无法在其他国家促进科技进步。因此，它为在不同学科(经济学、政治学、商业、工业研究)内发生的创新辩论提供信息，每一门学科往往都忽略了对创新政策和制度的文化分析。这些结果还可以帮助政策制定者确定如何调整从国外引进的政策解决方案，从而为政策进程提供信息。这项研究的成果在网上、学术和政策研究会议、研究生和本科生水平的课程以及同行评议的期刊文章中传播。

The project investigates the effect of national culture on the effectiveness of science and technology policies and institutions. Past research suggests that particular cultural features may promote innovativeness under some political or economic conditions (e.g., high levels of democracy) whereas other features may be more effective under other conditions (e.g., authoritarian regimes). The results of the research are important: if national culture matters, then simply budgeting more money for R&D, industrial infrastructure, and the promotion of entrepreneurship may not be sufficient to increase the national innovation rate of a country whose underlying cultural values are antithetical to innovative activity. Intellectual Merit: The critical innovation of this proposed research is to examine how culture may have an impact on innovative activity, scientific activity, and intellectual property rights. Most existing culture-innovation research uses qualitative case studies of firms or individuals, which are limited in their generalizeability. The research uses statistical methods to analyze the relationship between different cultural values, science policy and institutions, and national S&T performance. It analyzes data for dozens of countries over two decades, using several independent datasets developed recently to triangulate on both the independent and dependent variables. This study also controls for economic variables which constitute sources of omitted variable bias in prior research. In sum, it provides new insights into differences in national innovation rates across multiple countries over a long period of time and hence helps inform the debate on endogenous economic growth and national competitiveness in high-technologyBroader Impacts This project helps to explain why policies and institutions that are effective in one country fail to deliver scientific and technological progress in others. It therefore informs the innovation debates taking place within a variety of disciplines (economics, political science, business, industry studies), each of which often omits cultural analysis of innovation policies and institutions. The results also inform the policy process by helping policymakers determine to how to tailor policy solutions imported from abroad. The products of this research are disseminated online, at academic and policy research conferences, in graduate and undergraduate level courses, and in peer-reviewed journal articles.