Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Do Patents Lead to Economic Growth?

Recently I discussed a paper by David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson, Gary P. Pisano and Pian Shu. The paper noted that as competition from China increased, innovation by US firms, measured by patent output, decreased. I believe the result, but started to wonder… are patents a good measure of innovation? Do patents drive economic growth? […]

Competition from China reduced Innovation in the US

Via Tyler Cowen, here is a piece by David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson, Gary P. Pisano and Pian Shu. Cowen quoted the most important part, so let me follow his lead: The central finding of our regression analysis is that firms whose industries were exposed to a greater surge of Chinese import competition from […]

Innovation and production

 Yves Smith points to a MIT study on how much bigger the conversation should be than the political arguments of offshoring and outsourcing suggest.  And the complexities of applying ‘just in time’ sorts of global production systems through a complicated supply chain. From that post is this excerpt: And a new report by MIT on innovation […]

Taxes and job creators

Via Robert Waldmann Richard Thaler at Bloomberg provides a different take on innovators and job creators: A recurring theme of this year’s presidential campaign is the need to encourage the formation of new businesses. Republicans in general, and Mitt Romney in particular, have stressed that the best way to stimulate such startups is via low […]

CGI 2011 – Developing Green Technology

Van Jones of Rebuild the Dream introduces the two presenters by noting that we are in the “post-Whale oil” strategy for liquid fuels; using algae and biomass technologies. Jonathan Wolfson, CEO of Solazyme, Inc. opens by thanking his investors and then stating,  “We make oil.”  He declares that oil is not going away, and is […]

Health Care FYI

The quality of the posts at Disruptive Women in Health Care(r) varies widely, but their special issues bring out the best and leave most of the chaff behind. Their latest eBook is Innovation Nation: Recognizing the Benefits of Innovation in Health Care. The PDF (direct link here) collects a series of posts from December, and […]

Dylan Ratigan Town Hall Session on Jobs, Innovation

Hat tip Yves Smith for pointing us to this: 8 PM EST Watch Dylan Ratigan Town Hall Session on Jobs, Innovation Check in here at 8 PM to watch the Dylan Ratigan “Innovation in America” panel discussion as part of its Steel On Wheels Tour tonight at 8pm EST at the University of Denver. The […]