Innovations, Innovators and Knowledge Transfer

这项研究关注创新的激励和回报，以及它们对经济发展、增长和福利的影响。研究人员考察了以下三个相关问题：创新是否进入了正确的领域？创新和传播新想法的激励措施是否合适？经济的创新资本是由什么构成的？通过从一个新的角度解决这些问题，这项研究将增进我们对一些与国家繁荣和福利有关的最重要问题的认识。调查人员还发现了一个新的市场失灵来源，很可能会吸引这一领域的未来研究。本研究包括三个项目。第一个问题涉及创新资源的去向，以及它们如何在不同的研发领域分配。发展的理论表明，相对于社会最优，市场将过多的创新资源配置到高回报领域，就像互联网热潮中的情况一样。这种低效率的根源是在与R&D资源相结合、产生创新的未决问题上的产权缺失。认识到这一低效的来源，并检查具体的渠道及其潜在的规模，这是该项目的一个新贡献。第二个项目涉及创新与模仿的激励，以及这两种力量在推动增长方面的相互作用。知识产权影响着创新者和模仿者分享知识转移创造的盈余的方式。该项目进一步考察了对长期增长和福利的影响。第三个项目定量地考察了企业与发明者作为创新源泉的作用以及两者之间的匹配特性。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This research is concerned with the incentives and rewards to innovation, and their impacts on economic development, growth and welfare. The investigator examines three related questions as follows: Is innovation going to the right areas? Are the incentives for innovation and diffusion of new ideas appropriate? What constitutes the innovation capital of the economy? By addressing these questions from a novel perspective, this research will advance our knowledge about some of the most important issues that relate to national prosperity and welfare. The investigator also identifies a new source of market failure that is very likely to attract future research in this area. This research contains three projects. The first is concerned with where innovation resources go, how they are allocated across different R&D areas. The theory developed shows that the market allocates excessive innovation resources to high return areas relative to the social optima, as appeared to be the case in the dot.com boom. The source of the inefficiency is the lack of property rights on open problems that combined with R&D resources, give rise to innovations. It is a novel contribution of this project to recognize this source of inefficiency, and examine the specific channels and its potential magnitude. The second project is concerned with the incentives to innovate versus imitate and the interaction of the two forces in driving growth. Intellectual property rights affect the way in which innovators and imitators split the surplus created by knowledge transfer. This project further examines the impact on long run growth and welfare. The third project examines quantitatively the role of firms vis-a-vis inventors as sources of innovation and the properties of the match between the two.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.