The Economics of Science

Paula Stephan

Chapter Chapter 5 in Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, 2010, vol. 1, pp 217-273 from Elsevier

Abstract: This chapter examines the contributions that economists have made to the study of science and the types of contributions the profession is positioned to make in the future. Special emphasis is placed on the public nature of knowledge and characteristics of the reward structure that encourage the production and sharing of knowledge. The role that cognitive and noncognitive resources play in discovery is discussed as well as the costs of resources used in research. Different models for the funding of research are presented. The chapter also discusses scientific labor markets and the extreme difficulty encountered in forecasting the demand for and supply of scientists. The chapter closes with a discussion of the relationship of scientific research to economic growth and suggestions for future research.

Keywords: economics of science; knowledge production; patenting; priority; publishing; research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O34 O43 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (94)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169721810010051
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Journal Article: The Economics of Science (1996)
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:eee:haechp:v1_217

DOI: 10.1016/S0169-7218(10)01005-1

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Handbook of the Economics of Innovation from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().