Search Results
Working Paper
Comparative Advantage in Innovation and Production
This paper develops a multi-country, general equilibrium, semi endogenous growth model of innovation and trade in which specialization in innovation and production are jointly determined. The distinctive element of the model is the ability of the agents to direct their research efforts to specific goods, in a context of heterogeneous innovation capabilities across countries and contemporaneous decreasing returns to R&D. The model features a two-way relationship between trade and technology absent in standard quantitative Ricardian trade models. I calibrate the model using a sample of 29 ...
Journal Article
Venture capital in the Philadelphia metro area
Many consider venture capital to be a barometer of innovation and economic growth. It is an important source of capital for startups that banks deem too risky to finance. Therefore, it would be useful to examine how the venture capital industry has fared during the recent recession. This report focuses on the Philadelphia metro area and how it compares with the nation. In particular, it highlights the fact that the area increased its share of the nation?s biotechnology deals during the recession.
Speech
The new normal for the U.S. economy
President Patrick T. Harker gives opening remarks at the Bank?s 2015 Policy Forum: The New Normal for the U.S. Economy. He highlights how technology/innovation, social issues, and monetary policy all have important implications for policy over the long term. He also shares his own policy perspectives.
Working Paper
The Increasing Deflationary Influence of Consumer Digital Access Services
Consumer digital access services—internet, mobile phone, cable TV, and streaming—accounted for over 2 percent of U.S. household consumption in 2018. We construct prices for these services using direct measures of volume (data transmitted, talk time, and hours of programming). Our price index fell 12 percent per year from 1988 to 2018 while official prices moved up modestly. Using our digital services index, we estimate total personal consumption expenditure (PCE) prices have risen nearly 1/2 percentage point slower than the official index since 2008. Importantly, the spread between ...
Briefing
Networks, Innovation and Productivity: A Conference Recap
How do employment targets affect firm dynamics? What is the relationship between inventor migration, and local productivity and knowledge spillovers? How are surplus gains from inventions distributed? These were among the questions addressed by economists during a recent Richmond Fed research conference.Economists from the Richmond Fed, research universities and other institutions met in Richmond for a conference in May. Researchers presented papers on a variety of topics, including digital advertising, R&D allocation, production networks, and knowledge creation and diffusion.
Working Paper
Bubbles and the Value of Innovation
Episodes of booming innovation coincide with intense speculation in financial markets leading to bubbles—increases in market valuations and firm creation followed by a crash. We provide a framework reproducing these facts that makes a rich set of predictions on how speculation changes both the private and social values of innovation. We confirm the theory in the universe of U.S. patents issued from 1926 through 2010. Measures based on financial market information indicate that speculation increases the private value of innovation and reduces negative spillovers to competing firms. No ...
Journal Article
New ideas in the air: cities and economic growth
Most countries make sustained economic growth a principal policy objective. While many factors contribute to growth, economists believe that educating workers plays a critical role. Individuals invest in education because of the expected benefits to themselves or their children, such as higher earnings. But such private investment can increase the productivity of others as well. For example, the collaborative effort of many educated workers in a common enterprise may lead to invention and innovation that sustains the growth of the enterprise. Some economists believe there is an important link ...
Speech
Economic erowth and monetary policy: Is there a new normal?
The George Washington University and Princeton University's Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies Philadelphia, PA President Charles Plosser gives his views on the debate about a new normal for economic growth in the U.S. economy. He will also discuss the question of future productivity growth and highlight research in this area.
Working Paper
Agglomeration and innovation
Draft chapter for the forthcoming Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, Vols. 5A and 5B This paper reviews academic research on the connections between agglomeration and innovation. The authors first describe the conceptual distinctions between invention and innovation. They then discuss how these factors are frequently measured in the data and note some resulting empirical regularities. Innovative activity tends to be more concentrated than industrial activity, and the authors discuss important findings from the literature about why this is so. The authors highlight the traits of ...
Report
The dual nature of trade: measuring its impact on imitation and growth
Imports of goods that embody foreign technology raise a country's output directly as inputs into production and indirectly through reverse-engineering of these goods, which contributes to domestic imitation and innovation. This paper first quantifies spillovers from high-technology imports from developed countries to domestic imitation and innovation in both developed and developing countries. It then considers the contribution of foreign and domestic innovation to real per capita GDP growth. ; International patent data for forty countries from 1970 to 1985 are used to create proxies for ...