All of diamondcanyon's Comments + Replies
AMA: Matt Clancy, Open Philanthropy
What does the economics of innovation have to say about a late adopter/slow adopter industry like Construction, where productivity has been flat at best for four decades, and not just in the USA? If Construction is somewhere around 6% of GNP, you'd think the issue would get more attention.
11yA really good research agenda needs to have two features: it should be an
important problem, and you need an angle of attack on it. In the case of the
economics of innovation, I think that biases the field towards studying sectors
where there is readily available data, whether those are patents, granular data
on productivity, approved drugs, or whatever. A lot of low-growth sectors -
education, construction, government - are maybe areas where high quality data
isn't as readily available. Or in some cases, innovation-relevant data might
actually exist, but a critical mass of scholars don't understand it, which makes
it hard to study and get good feedback on your work.
That said, there is some work on this. Personally, I'm excited to look into this
handbook
[https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/role-innovation-and-entrepreneurship-economic-growth]
that examines the pace of entrepreneurship and innovation across a bunch of
different sectors. Also check out Brian Potter
[https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/construction-physics-table-of-contents]
on the construction industry specifically!
thx -- I'm aware of Brian's work, will check out the handbook.