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What are key, policy-relevant questions where we could use more academic research?

I spoke recently to econ PhD students at the NBER Innovation Bootcamp about holes that I think are not well-answered by the existing literature.

Here's my list of 11 in no particular order:🧵
1) Should optimal intellectual property protections vary across industries or technology areas based on the underlying structure of knowledge production?

(weak protections in software vs strong protections in pharma as an archetypical example)
2) How do technology transfer offices compare across universities?

Are there identifiable best practices at these offices that should be scaled?
3) What attributes of institutional decision-making lead to better (or different) results over time?

I'd love to see more papers like this one on the ARPA model: www.nber.org/papers/w24674
4) How can institutions renew themselves over time?

(What are the best historical case studies of renewal?
Is creative destruction necessary at some level?)
5) How can and should we measure innovation beyond patents/papers?
6) What are the attributes of various innovation financing mechanisms that make them appropriate for different kinds of problems?
7) Is it possible to scale the impact of role models (a la Bell and Chetty) in inspiring innovation? Surely the internet should help here?
www.nber.org/papers/w24062
8) Are there ways we can reliably incorporate the costs of *inaction* into government decision-making and cost-benefit analysis?

FDA drug approval is the classic example, but this NEPA case study is also relevant: www.nytimes.com/2022/06/12/opinion/traffic-congestion-new-york-climate-policy.html
9) How strong is path dependence in science and technology development?

When and why does path dependence become stronger or weaker?
10) What’s the role of human capital in tech cluster formation relative to financing?
11) Why are all the key decision makers across our institutions getting older and what effect is this having on the results we see?
What are other important, policy-relevant questions that are understudied?
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Noah Smith @NoahSmith · Aug 2, 2022
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Great thread!