I have a new personal web page: https://mattsclancy.com
Please visit the new site for more up-to-date information. This older site is increasingly out of date, but I haven’t got around to archiving it and setting up a proper re-direct.
Innovation / Economics / Agriculture
Photo by Carl Wycoff (Creative Commons)
I am a writer, researcher, and educator on the economics of innovation at Iowa State University, and a senior fellow with the Institute for Progress.
New Things Under the Sun
At the moment, my primary project is New Things Under the Sun, a living literature review of academic studies related to innovation, written to be accessible to a wide audience. The project is in partnership with the Institute for Progress. To learn more about the project, visit the site’s About page, or subscribe to the official newsletter. Or, just start exploring the site!
Writing
I’ve also written a bit for a general audience:
- Progressive Policy Institute: The Case for a More Distributed Federal Workforce. February (2021)
- Work in Progress: What Ails the Social Sciences? Winter (2021)
- City Journal: Remote Work’s Time Has Come. Spring (2020).
- The Economist Intelligence Unit Perspectives blog: Remote Work is Here to Stay. May 2020.
I still occasionally maintain a blog and medium account where I write on other topics. Some popular posts:
- A Beginner’s Guide to #EconTwitter
- What has covid-19 taught us about remote work
- Rehabiliting the Death of Distance to Revitalize Rural Economies
I’ve also written a series of research digests on important articles in the economics of innovation that lacked an accessible overview.
Researcher
The Case for Remote Work (2020)
Pulls together recent research from multiple social science sub-disciplines to argue remote work is both desirable and likely to become more prevalent.
The Roots of Agricultural Innovation: Patent Evidence of Knowledge Spillovers (with Paul Heisey, Yongjie Ji, and GianCarlo Moschini) (2019)
Evidence that the majority of knowledge used in agricultural innovation is typically derived from outside of agriculture. Measures knowledge flows with citations to patents/articles, and by novel text.
Incentivizing New Veterinary Pharmaceutical Products to Combat Antibiotic Resistance (with Stacy Sneeringer) (2019)
Quantitative & qualitative overview of incentives to develop new drugs in veterinary medicine, with an emphasis on similarities and differences with human medicine.
Inventing by combining pre-existing technologies: Patent evidence on learning and fishing out (2017)
Innovation studied as combinations of patent classifications; absent continuous discovery of novel connections between technologies, innovation can be exhausted.
US patents exhibit fewer novel connections between technologies and spillovers across fields; quantifies the impact on future innovation.
Mandates and the Incentive for Environmental Innovation. (with GianCarlo Moschini) (2017)
Applied theory paper showing quantity mandates (e.g., “must use X gallons of biofuel in 2020”) provide weaker incentives for radical innovation than carbon taxes, but stronger incentives for incremental innovation.
Intellectual Property Rights and the Ascent of Proprietary Innovation in Agriculture. (with GianCarlo Moschini) (2017)
A review of the literature on IP in biological innovation in agriculture, situating it in the broader literature on whether IP promotes or retards innovation.
Incentives for Innovation: Patents, Prizes, and Research Contracts. (with GianCarlo Moschini) (2013)
A review of the literature on incentivizing R&D, going beyond intellectual property rights.
For a full list of research, click the research tab above.
Educator
My classes (at Iowa State University):
- The Economics of Innovation (ECON 383X): A class for undergraduates with a minimum economic background, framed around the question “Will innovation solve humanity’s most important challenges?” Each class covers a relevant topic through the lens of recent scholarship. Click here to see the reading list.
- Industrial Organization (ECON 416): Upper level undergraduate class on economics where firms seek or have market power.
- Intermediate Microeconomics (ECON 301): Calculus based microeconomics.
- Principles of Microeconomics (ECON 101): An introduction to economics. Uses the CORE Econ book.
About Me
Currently, I’m an assistant teaching professor at Iowa State University affiliated with the Agricultural Entrepreneurship Initiative and the Department of Economics.
Before that, I was a research economist at the US Department of Agriculture in Washington DC, where I worked on science policy issues.
Prior to that I did a PhD in Economics at Iowa State University, an MSc at the London School of Economics, worked as an analyst in London, and did a Diploma in Economics at the University of Cambridge.
Email: mclancy@iastate.edu for university business but I prefer mattclancy at hey dot com for everything else.
Twitter: @mattsclancy