Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Does academic research cause economic growth?

lemire.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 34 posts

Re: Does academic research cause economic growth?

#11

Post by simonster »

It's possible that academic research causes economic growth, but that it doesn't do so on a country by country basis. A significant proportion of people trained in American research universities are not Americans. Many of these people probably return to their home country where they use their knowledge in industry. Furthermore, anyone who picks up your scientific paper can go ahead and implement what's in it regardless of where they are.

It may be that the we should fund scientific research because it benefits everyone rather than because it gives us an advantage over other nations.

Re: Does academic research cause economic growth?

#12

Post by javert »

jamesjporter wrote: post #6
jostmey wrote: post #4

I looked up the Author's published manuscripts to see what his background is in research. It appears that his expertise lies outside that of physics, chemistry, or biology but is instead in algorithm design(??) and data analysis(??). I wonder if the programming community relies on academia as much as for example the medical industry or the aeronautical industry.

I think the programming industry is interesting because my impression (I have no idea if this is backed up by data) is that there's much more mixing between academia and the private sector (i.e. people move from academic to industry jobs and vice-versa more frequently/easily) than in other fields (natural science, social sciences). I wonder if this increases the productivity of either.

I wonder if this increases the productivity of either.

My research as a CS grad student is very much motivated by interactions with industry people, and very much is intended to facilitate things they need.

So, yes, mixing in the computer science/software engineering field is very useful for both academia and industry.

Re: Does academic research cause economic growth?

#13

Post by javert »

It's very important to remember that government research money is taken from the citizens, who otherwise would allocate it in accordance with their preferences.

Taxes in the US are actually very high, plus the government takes a lot of money via inflation of the money supply.

It seems likely to me that government-funded research is a "local maximum."

If we were to massively shift the backbone of the economy from consumption to production (i.e., letting people and companies keep more of their money), we would certainly see much more private research.

In fact, we could potentially have a "research economy," if the intellectual property issues were sorted out. In this system, research institutes would take over a lot of functionality from academic departments (including training new researchers). Such an institute my employ tenured academicians who make lower, fixed wages (as with current academicians) but are free to do basic research, plus applied people try to market the results and are paid competitively (as with current industry people).

There is also a high level of regulatory capture in most industries that punishes any attempt to transition research results into a marketable product.

Re: Does academic research cause economic growth?

#15

Post by macspoofing »

javert wrote: post #13

It's very important to remember that government research money is taken from the citizens, who otherwise would allocate it in accordance with their preferences. Taxes in the US are actually very high, plus the government takes a lot of money via inflation of the money supply. It seems likely to me that government-funded research is a "local maximum." If we were to massively shift the backbone of the economy from cons…

>It seems likely to me that government-funded research is a "local maximum."

So is private research.

Re: Does academic research cause economic growth?

#16

Post by djcapelis »

jlcx wrote: post #5
jostmey wrote: post #2

I do not believe that the U.S. government should fund translational research. I firmly believe that private enterprise will be able to efficiently make immediate use of any important scientific breakthroughs or discoveries. Instead, I believe that the government should pore funding into basic science research. I completely disagree with the Author's implicit assertion that the U.S. government should spend less money…

Some private organizations have very deep pockets, and it's not just industry, as non-profits can also fund research. But if industry is biased toward applied/translational research, perhaps it's not just a focus on short-term profitability or a lack of funds for large projects. One interesting idea is that patent laws are partially responsible for this bias, because they grant a temporary monopoly on inventions/appl…

> as non-profits can also fund research

They can, but the reality is very few are really prepared to do a good job of it and even fewer have the resources to really fund the portfolios relevant to them in the same way other institutions (gov, some large corps, etc) do.

The non-profit sector has a bunch of hard working folks with great goals and there's a bunch of good uses for them to put money toward, but frankly I'm not sure R&D is the one that makes the best impact. I think if a non-profit is going to fund R&D they need to be really really smart, innovative and/or creative to make their money get the type of impact they could get on spending it in critical areas outside of R&D.

This changes depending on the field though. In some areas of the arts and humanities, non-profit funding is a huge and valuable source of funding.

But in tech/sci/eng? Not so much.

Re: Does academic research cause economic growth?

#17

Post by twmb »

javert wrote: post #13

It's very important to remember that government research money is taken from the citizens, who otherwise would allocate it in accordance with their preferences. Taxes in the US are actually very high, plus the government takes a lot of money via inflation of the money supply. It seems likely to me that government-funded research is a "local maximum." If we were to massively shift the backbone of the economy from cons…

Taxes are not very high in the US. We have about 26.9% total tax revenue (which I will abbreviate TTR. TTR is measured as a percentage of GDP)[0][1]. I hate seeing this statement thrown out as if it is fact. We have very low taxes comparatively, especially given our status as a highly developed and competitive economy.

We are #7 on the Global Competitive Index, behind Switzerland (29.4% TTR), Singapore (14.2% TTR), Finland (43.6% TTR), Sweden (47.9% TTR), Netherlands (39.8% TTR), and Germany (40.6% TTR) [3].

Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and other countries that are close below the US have socialist governments. As much as hip, intellectual go-getters who read Ayn Rand would love there to be no government, it's simply not feasible. It may be great in theory, but it's not great in practice. However, I do not know much about the Ayn Rand's entire philosophy, so I wont comment on it further. I do know that most people who blindly latch on to some of her ideas don't truly understand her philosophy.

Half of that 'regulatory capture' you refer to is because of private interests lobbying for government restrictions. The will of the free market may drive such anti-competitive practices by private interests out of business eventually, but humans do not operate on the long term.

Regardless, the point of this post is that even if you thought you opened up your eyes before to the realities of the world and exactly how it should work, I invite you to take a step back every now and then and reevaluate your philosophies.

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenu... [1]http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/numb... [3]http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GlobalCompetitivenessReport...

Re: Does academic research cause economic growth?

#18

Post by twmb »

twmb wrote: post #17
javert wrote: post #13

It's very important to remember that government research money is taken from the citizens, who otherwise would allocate it in accordance with their preferences. Taxes in the US are actually very high, plus the government takes a lot of money via inflation of the money supply. It seems likely to me that government-funded research is a "local maximum." If we were to massively shift the backbone of the economy from cons…

Taxes are not very high in the US. We have about 26.9% total tax revenue (which I will abbreviate TTR. TTR is measured as a percentage of GDP)[0][1]. I hate seeing this statement thrown out as if it is fact. We have very low taxes comparatively, especially given our status as a highly developed and competitive economy. We are #7 on the Global Competitive Index, behind Switzerland (29.4% TTR), Singapore (14.2% TTR), F…

Also, my numbering got a little off because it's late, and I can't edit. Looks funnier this way.

Re: Does academic research cause economic growth?

#19

Post by cdi »

It seems author goes from presupposition that economic growth is something inherently good or better than pursuit and dissemination of knowledge. Knowledge itself is valuable for society. If you don't agree, I don't want to know you.

Private companies don't fund fundamental/basic research, unless we have semi-monopolistic situation like with AT&T Bell Labs before breakup, and Microsoft Research today. If you're in highly competitive market, you simply can't fund things which don't improve your bottom line in foreseeable future.

Academic institutions provide highly trained employees for industry, without funding of academic research, quality of teaching will decrease significantly. Even if there is a problem in finding correlation between funding of public research and economic growth (which I find highly dubious, it goes against intuition and lots of examples) it definitely helps humanity as a whole, because knowledge is not locked up in borders. Although people who go with commercialization of an invention they've come up with while in academia, most commonly do it in their home country.

Re: Does academic research cause economic growth?

#20

Post by vacri »

beloch wrote: post #3

For the studies mentioned, how do you decide what leads to economic growth and what doesn't? Take Lasers for example. The first Laser was made at Bell Labs, a commercial research lab. It would not have been possible without the maser that came before it in academia, or the work done by Einstein, also in academia. Lasers have had an immense economic impact, but do we credit them to academic or commercial research? The…

The author is misrepresenting his first quoted study: 'little or no direct effect', my emphasis. He takes this to mean 'no effect', which is a lot of screaming bullshit, as you say.

Another example of government research being very beneficial in an indirect manner is in things like mental illness research. Little is done privately outside of pharmaceutics, yet improved treatment of mental illness significantly improves the economy - workers are more productive, more people participate in the workforce (and subsequently fewer crimes), and of course there are a ton of non-economic benefits.

Similarly, the US saw a massive economic growth from its early days all the way to WWII

The US is an incredibly wealthy landscape, in terms of mineral wealth, agricultural wealth, and temperate weather. Throw in a massive population increase, successful wars of conquest, and a productive temperate climate, and the author is pushing shit uphill with a pointed stick if he's trying to make the argument against publicly-funded R&D this way.

Post reply on HN