🔎 Patent citations are everywhere in innovation research. But do they really trace how ideas spill over between inventors—or are we mistaking legal paperwork for knowledge flows? 🧐 New on #ThePatentist: www.thepatentist.com/p/patent-cit... #patents #innovation #spillovers

Excellent retrospective approach to a timely prospective question.

New research by Pierre Azoulay, Danielle Li, Bhaven Sampat and me. Earlier this year, the President’s budget proposed a 40% cut to the budget of the NIH. This motivated us to ask: what if the NIH had been 40% smaller?

If you're a thinker or do-er in the housing space and you haven't subscribed to @michaelwiebe.bsky.social's substack, you're doing it wrong! It's a living urban econ lit review, inspired by @mattsclancy.bsky.social's New Things Under the Sun. Great stuff! Here's an example ⤵️.

Nice article on returns to R&D in MIT Tech Review, ft. our own @mattsclancy.bsky.social www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/17/...

Deadline to apply to these positions is today! Big opportunity to accelerate growth and progress in housing, energy, clinical trials, and more.

PODCAST | Remote working and the future of cities 🎙️ @andrewcities.bsky.social is joined by @mattsclancy.bsky.social to discuss hybrid working, productivity, cities and the future of work. Listen to the pod 🎧👇

The Abundance and Growth Fund at Open Philanthropy is hiring! We’re looking for 2-4 people to help expand this new $120+ million program to accelerate economic growth and reduce the cost of living through strategic grantmaking and research. (1/4) www.openphilanthropy.org/research/ann...

Este es el futuro.

Enter the 1st pop‑up journal, true living R&D ROI lab for Zvi Griliches: revisiting his seminal question, catalyzing his legacy in real‑time policy, and promising impact no posthumous Econ Nobel (which he more than deserved!) ever could. Arguably the wisest academic publishing initiative in decades.

Such a clever idea. You could imagine its application to all sorts of wicked problems…

This is a really cool kind of initiative: a pop-up journal on the returns to public R&D: popupjournal.com. Pop-up journals to coordinate research on questions that matter!

Interesting initiative!

Love this - need more innovation in academic publishing

Very excited to join with Open Philanthropy on an all-out sprint to answer some of the thorniest practical questions in economics. First question: What return do we get when we invest in R&D?

Good luck with this! An interesting innovation in the organization of the study of innovation.

interesting idea. we need more innovation in the research publication/curation space.

Interesting metascience experiment: a pop-up journal! Read @mattsclancy.bsky.social's thread for details and how to apply.

Very cool!

What’s the return on government support for R&D? To try to get a credible answer, Open Philanthropy and the Sloan Foundation are committing up to $1 million to trying something new: we call it a Pop-Up Journal.

✴️ REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS! ✴️ @navigation.org is seeking bold projects at the intersection of AI and Open Science. We support innovative applications that make science more transparent, efficient, and trustworthy. Deadline: July 15, 2025. os.nav.fund/ai-for-os/ #openscience #AIforScience

I've been told the US Patent and Trademark Office is expected to terminate its PatentsView contract, meaning all the datasets and disambiguation available at patentsview.org will likely go offline March 28. Associated github repository might also go offline.

Cool blogpost by @mattsclancy.bsky.social on (US) Government R&D spending. tldr: It is a good thing. #science4policy mattsclancy.substack.com/p/frequently...

New blog post: Why should we have to pay for projects in foreign countries with our tax dollars? blog.jacobtrefethen.com/generosity/

After being alerted about possible misconduct, the I4R are reproducing published papers that use data from a specific NGO (GDRI). This thread releases the first 2 reports and provides more information about the work and responses/statements from authors journals and journals. 🧵

Graduate admissions being put on hold because of the chaos...

This is very much worth a careful read. It strikes a very good balance of what’s good and what could be better. “Science is done by people” is an under-appreciated principle

New post! Frequently Asked Questions about US Government Funding for R&D. Short answers in the thread, longer answers at the link in the replies.

Fascinating conversation between @jburnmurdoch.ft.com and @mattsclancy.bsky.social about drivers of innovation in #TheEconomicsShow My favourite bit was the discussion after John asked whether wars could speed up innovation by making it more urgent podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Join us for the University of Göttingen Replication Games on April 7th! We are looking for researchers and graduate students; all social science fields. Teams will also have the opportunity to reproduce a study focusing on deforestation if they want. Register here: surveymonkey.ca/r/Replicatio...

How important is government funding to economic growth? @mattsclancy.bsky.social digs into the data: mattsclancy.substack.com/p/government...

Great blog from @mattsclancy.bsky.social on measuring returns to government R&D! One key finding: when govt funds a 1% increase in R&D “capital stock," the whole economy gets ~0.2% more productive a decade later. Compelling evidence we should invest more in research.

@jburnmurdoch.ft.com invited me to talk about a post I wrote on his own viral article about changing attitudes towards progress. We ended up chatting about lots more! If this stuff interested you, here's a thread of links to learn much more. www.ft.com/content/3412...

A reminder that the US gets more $$ back for every $ spent on R&D. There are a lot of ways that the NIH and other grantmaking agencies could be improved, but even under the status quo they are generating enormous value, including lives saved, new jobs, and economic growth.

1. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%. I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

New post! Looking at three recent papers on the productivity impact of public R&D, all find positive impacts. mattsclancy.substack.com/p/government...

Great article, clearly addressing a fundamental question about literary change. Events matter, retirements matter, but what really matters is:

New op ed from Tom Wein, @garrisonlovely.bsky.social and I on PEPFAR and giving up the legacy of US power in Africa: foreignpolicy.com/2025/02/05/p...

Since AI’s impact on jobs is in the discourse, reposting this explainer I did in June on economic models of automation and labor outcomes. www.newthingsunderthesun.com/pub/4bnobp5q

Join us for the Minnesota Replication Games on March 17th! We are looking for researchers and graduate students; all social science fields! Participants get coauthorship to a meta-paper combining reproductions/replications! Register here: www.surveymonkey.ca/r/Replicatio...

New post! Looking at who benefits more from technologies that make discovery easier; literal maps, genome wide association studies, and machine learning.

Who benefits from prediction technologies? The usual great and helpful stuff from @mattsclancy.bsky.social. Dropping this straight into my course reading! mattsclancy.substack.com/p/do-predict...

New research alert! Our study investigates the effectiveness of human-only, AI-assisted, and AI-led teams in assessing the reproducibility of quantitative social science research. We've got some surprising findings!

Our global study on the state of trust in scientists is now out in Nature Human Behaviour! 🥳 With a team of 241 researchers, we surveyed 71,922 people in 68 countries, providing the largest dataset on trust in scientists post-pandemic 👇🧵https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-02090-5

My take on BlueSky vs Twitter is that they’re both bubbles, but different kinds of bubble, and the best option is to use both.

🚨 New Paper 🚨 1/ What drives STEM researchers to pursue entrepreneurship? Our new publication in Research Policy, @inaganguli.bsky.social, Nilanjana Dasgupta, and I explore this question. Key Takeaway: Social impact framing increased women's interest in entrepreneurship 🧵 #econsky

I have decided to weigh in on the Great H-1B Debate with... 3000 words on what the academic literature has to say about H-1Bs. www.laurenpolicy.com/p/h-1b-visas...

please repost! :)

Illuminating post by @mattsclancy.bsky.social! open.substack.com/pub/mattscla...

New post! Gene-disease maps, software for science, and AI/ML are all forms of prediction technology. How do they impact innovation? open.substack.com/pub/mattscla...