Wes Cohen did the opening address to the conference reviewing the empirical research on the 'economics of innovation' across 50 years (late 1950s ro 2010ish). The term 'the economics of'' is usually meant, as it was here, in a very technical sense - the tools of standard neo-classical economics applied to whatever.
I am always stunned by the narrowness of the topics 'true' economist rather than those who are rather more heterodox and more problem focussed are. The economists start with the topics which seem to cause the most pain for their modelling of the economy. Rather than focussing on the bigger issues within the topic and trying to understand those better.
So economists have spent 50 years looking at firm size and RandD amongst other topics.
However, onto other things. I thought I would keep a tally of the topics and methodologies of the papers I heard.
Paper 1: Pharmaceticals in India, econometrics.
Paper 2: Semi-conductor industry, world, econometrics
Paper 3: U.S. trucking industry, econometrics
Paper 4: Patents, eco-energy, descriptive
Paper 5: establishment data, geography, econometrics
Paper 6: Photovoltaics, patents, Germany, descriptive
Paper 7: Multinational corporations in Portugal, labour market data, econometrics.
paper 8: Knowledge theory /descriptive paper.
Paper 9: Biopharma firms, USA, spatial analysis, econometrics
So the Pharma industry with 2 of 9 papers wins day 1.
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