Idea and Economic Spillovers from Publicly-funded Biomedical Research

该项目的目标是促进对生物医学研究回报的理解。该项目考察了新的科学知识如何跨地区和机构环境流动，以及这些知识流动如何影响科学创新、健康和经济增长。这个项目既考察了想法溢出效应(科学家迁移到新的地理位置会影响同事的生产力)，也考察了经济溢出效应(公共资助的基础研究最终被商业公司转化为新药、设备或治疗方法)。这项研究使用了调查团队在过去几年中收集的独特数据集，该数据集匹配了1975至2006年间医学院教师和NIH受赠者的完整名册的出版产出、NIH资金和专利。它还利用了美国专利商标局(USPTO)自1976年以来发布的所有生物医学专利的数据。智力优势：这项研究的一个主要贡献是评估了想法溢出在空间中的局部化程度。因此，它促进了对向心力的理解，这些向心力能够随着时间的推移维持以研发为基础的地理集群(如旧金山南部、肯德尔广场或拉霍亚)。特别是，它提供了对企业研发生产率建立在学术研究基础上程度的直接估计。对知识溢出运行机制的探索为如何在组织间分配人才提供了见解。该项目促进了人们对影响代理人之间信息流动的技术和政策如何影响技术创新的速度和方向的理解。广泛的影响：除了促进对科学经济学的理解，并为当代的政策辩论提供信息之外，该项目还有几个额外的成果。首先，将专利引文与生物医学文章相匹配的模糊匹配算法对对科技政策感兴趣的广泛学者很有用。其次，该领域的研究通过修改在先前NSF支持下开发的几个开放源码软件程序而得到促进。最后，调查结果通过各种媒体传播给广泛的受众，以促进与学者、政策制定者、行业代表和其他利益相关者的公开对话。

The goal of this project is to advance understanding of the returns to biomedical research. The project examines how new scientific knowledge flows across locations and institutional settings, and how these knowledge flows affect scientific innovation, health, and economic growth. This project examines both idea spillovers (where the movement of scientists to new geographic locations affects productivity of their colleagues) and economic spillovers (where publicly-funded basic research is eventually translated into new drugs, devices, or treatments by commercial firms). The research uses a unique dataset assembled by the investigative team over the past several years, which matches publication output, NIH funding, and patents for the complete roster of medical school faculty and NIH grantees between 1975 and 2006. It also utilizes data from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on all biomedical patents issued since 1976.Intellectual Merit: A major contribution of the research is that it assesses the degree to which idea spillovers are localized in space. As such, it promotes understanding of the centripetal forces that sustain R&D-based geographic clusters (such as South San Francisco, Kendall Square, or La Jolla) over time. In particular, it provides direct estimates of the extent to which firms' R&D productivity builds on academic research. The exploration of the mechanisms through which knowledge spillovers operate provides insights on how to allocate talent across organizations. The project advances understanding of how the technologies and policies that influence the flow of information between agents affect the rate and direction of technological innovation.Broader Impact: Beyond advancing understanding in the economics of science, and informing contemporary policy debates, this project has several additional outputs. First, the fuzzy-matching algorithm that matches patent citations to biomedical articles is useful to a wide range of scholars interested in science and technology policy. Second, research in the area is facilitated by the modification of several open-source software programs developed under prior NSF support. Finally, the findings are disseminated through various media to a wide range of audiences, to facilitate an open dialogue with academics, policymakers, industry representatives, and other stakeholders