Threats to scientific progress, past and present

Alessandro Iaria, Carlo Schwarz and Fabian Waldinger

CentrePiece - The magazine for economic performance from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: A US boycott of Chinese researchers, as threatened by the Trump administration, could stifle scientific progress and technological innovation. That is the concern of Alessandro Iaria, Carlo Schwarz and Fabian Waldinger, whose research looks at the period between 1914 and 1926, when Allied scientists were cut off from their peers in Central countries - with damaging consequences for world science. Their study reveals how the interruption of international knowledge flows, as a result of the First World War and its aftermath, led to stark declines in the production of research deemed worthy of a Nobel prize nomination. Barriers to international scientific co-operation slow down the production of basic science and its application in new technologies. In contrast, policies that widen access to frontier research could benefit society beyond the confines of science itself.

Keywords: frontier knowledge; scientific production; international knowledge flows; WW1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 J44 N3 N30 N4 N40 O3 O31 O5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-ino and nep-knm
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepcnp:530

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