Of Mice and Academics: Examining the Effect of Openness on Innovation
Name
Murray_Of mice and academics.pdf
Size
700.59 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
55c251d1bb37e6593063fff7cafbdd24
Author(s)
Aghion, Philippe
Murray, Fiona E
Dewatripont, Mathias
Kolev, Julian Emil
Stern, Scott
Date Issued
February 2016
Journal
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
Publisher
American Economic Association
Citation
Murray, Fiona; Aghion, Philippe; Dewatripont, Mathias; Kolev, Julian and Stern, Scott. “Of Mice and Academics: Examining the Effect of Openness on Innovation.” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 8, no. 1 (February 2016): 212–252. © 2016 American Economic Association
Version
Final published version
Abstract
This paper argues that openness, by lowering costs to access existing research, can enhance both early and late stage innovation through greater exploration of novel research directions. We examine a natural experiment in openness: late-1990s NIH agreements that reduced academics' access costs regarding certain genetically engineered mice. Implementing difference-in-differences estimators, we find that increased openness encourages entry by new researchers and exploration of more diverse research paths, and does not reduce the creation of new genetically engineered mice. Our findings highlight a neglected cost of strong intellectual property restrictions: lower levels of exploration leading to reduced diversity of research output. (JEL I23, O31, O33, O34)
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20140062
