Science, Philanthropy, and American Leadership
Robert W. Conn,
Peter F. Cowhey,
Joshua Graff Zivin and
Christopher L. Martin
No 31718, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Abstract:
Investments in the US Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine and Innovation (STEMI) enterprise come from many different sectors and their combined effect crucially enhances the nation’s competitiveness. Philanthropy is an under-appreciated component of this ecosystem, providing $21.5 billion of research funding at universities and non-profits in 2021 or roughly 42% of the federal outlay at these institutions. In this paper, we argue that these decentralized and diverse set of philanthropic funders alter the incentives and behavior within the US research enterprise to make it more risk tolerant and more innovative than government or business funding alone would yield. It also enables significant innovation in the development of human capital in STEMI areas. We conclude with a comparison of the US research ecosystem to that of China to understand how the two systems differ, with a particular emphasis on the differentiating role that philanthropy may play in influencing the scientific and economic competitiveness of each nation.
JEL-codes: H4 L30 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ger and nep-ino
Note: PE PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w31718.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31718
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w31718
The price is Paper copy available by mail.
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).