Research
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"Scientific Talent Leaks Out of Funding Gaps" (with Wei Yang Tham, Joseph Staudt, and Stephanie Cheng) [pdf]
We study how delays in NIH grant funding affect the career outcomes of research personnel. Using comprehensive earnings and tax records linked to university transaction data along with a difference-in-differences design, we find that a funding interruption of more than 30 days has a substantial effect on job placements for personnel who work in labs with a single NIH R01 research grant, including a 3 percentage point (40%) increase in the probability of not working in the US. Incorporating information from the full 2020 Decennial Census and data on publications, we find that about half of those induced into nonemployment appear to permanently leave the US and are 90% less likely to publish in a given year, with even larger impacts for trainees (postdocs and graduate students). Among personnel who continue to work in the US, we find that interrupted personnel earn 20% less than their continuously-funded peers, with the largest declines concentrated among trainees and other non-faculty personnel (such as staff and undergraduates). Overall, funding delays account for about 5% of US nonemployment in our data, indicating that they have a meaningful effect on the scientific labor force at the national level.
Other Press:
"What steps to take when funding starts to run out: Although researchers often face uncertainty when grants expire with no replacement in sight, there are creative ways to ease the dry spell." Nature - Career Feature, May 24, 202 - link
"The Value Of Stability In Scientific Funding, And Why We Need Better Data" Good Science Project, February 27, 2024 - "link
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"Cutting the Innovation Engine: How Federal Funding Shocks Affect University Patenting, Entrepreneurship, and Publications" (with Tania Babina, Alex Xi He, Sabrina Howell, and Joseph Staudt) QJE [pdf]
This paper studies how federal funding affects the innovation outputs of university researchers. We link person-level research grants from 22 universities to patent, publication, and career outcomes from the U.S. Census Bureau. We focus on the effects of large, idiosyncratic, and temporary cuts to federal funding in a researcher's pre-existing narrow field of study. Using an event-study design that controls for principal investigator fixed effects, we document that these negative federal funding shocks reduce high-tech entrepreneurship and publications but increase patenting. The lost publications tend to be higher quality and more basic, while the additional patents tend to be lower quality, less general, and more often privately assigned. Overall, the federal funding cuts push researchers away from more open research with greater impact on future knowledge, and towards more subsequently appropriated research. The level of funding explains the effects on publications, while the source of funding—federal vs. private—appears to play an important role in the effects on high-tech entrepreneurship and patents. Together with evidence from industry contracts, the results suggest that shifting university research funding from federal to private sources leads to more appropriation of intellectual property by corporate sponsors.
Interviews:
"The shift to private R&D investment may curtail innovation" Axios Future, Jan 30, 2021 - link
"Elisabeth Perlman on Federal Funding, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship" The Visible Hand, Episode 62 - link
"Cutting the Innovation Engine" Faculti - link
Other Press:
"Are Federal and Private Research Funding Substitutes?" NBER Digest, March, 2021 - link
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Connecting the Periphery: Three Papers on the Developments Caused by Spreading Transportation and Information Networks in the Nineteenth Century United States [full thesis]
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"Dense Enough To Be Brilliant: Patents, Urbanization, and Transportation in Nineteenth Century America" [chapter one] [chapter two] [appendices] [slides]
This paper examines the geographic distribution of patenting in the nineteenth century United States as it evolves in response to transportation improvements. I find a robust, statistically significant, and positive effect of increases in local transportation access on patenting. Over the twenty years following the arrival of the railroad in a county, the number of patents per capita doubles. I explore two possible mechanisms behind this increase: a) inventors responded to larger markets afforded by transportation improvements; or b) transportation improved information flows making investors more productive. I find little evidence that patenting responded positively to increased market access per se, but that local access still matters. Using digitized texts of patents, I measure whether any given patent mentions a previous, novel technology within a particular time frame. I find little evidence that the speed of arrival of these new ideas is related to transportation improvements. These results suggest that access to local transportation lowers the effective cost of patenting by forming a nexus around which local agglomerations occur.
CityLab Blog Post: The Historic Link Between Cities and Innovation
Supplements: [job market version] [patent access] [alt IV tables] [word list]
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"Who Used Postal Savings? A Description of the First Federally Insured Savings Institution" (with Matt Jaremski and Steven Sprick Schuster) Social Science History [pdf]
Using novel data sets on Postal Savings depositor behavior and bank location, we provide a history of the United States Postal Savings System by measuring how depositor behavior changed over time, in response to economic shocks, demographics, and the presence of commercial banks. We describe the system's three distinct phases: pre-1929 Crash, Great Depression until WWII, and WWII through the end of the program. The characteristics of depositors changed over time, from non-farming immigrant populations in the early years towards broad nationwide use of the system after 1930. Throughout the history of the system, individuals changed their behavior following negative economic shocks by relying more heavily on Postal Savings, especially for short-term deposits. Finally, the data indicate that Postal Savings was at least a partial substitute for commercial banks.
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"Delivering the Vote: The Political Effect of Free Mail Delivery in Early Twentieth Century America" (with Steven Sprick Schuster) JEH [pdf] [online apendix] [slides]
The rollout of Rural Free Delivery (RFD) in the early twentieth century dramatically increased the frequency with which rural voters received information. This paper examines the effect of RFD on voters' and Representatives' behavior using a panel dataset and instrumental variables. Communities receiving more routes spread their votes to more parties, especially smaller parties. However, we fail to find a significant change in voter turnout. RFD shifted positions taken by Representatives to ones in line with rural communities, including increasing support for pro-temperance and anti-immigration policies. Our results are much stronger in counties with newspapers, supporting the hypothesis that information flows play a crucial role in the political process.
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"The Impact of Railroads on School Enrollment in Nineteenth Century America" (with Jeremy Atack and Robert A. Margo) [pdf]
One of the central features of nineteenth century economic development in the United States was the "Transportation Revolution," in which the speed of moving goods and people increased rapidly, and prices fell, with important economic and social effects. This paper uses a newly created panel data set matching information on transportation infrastructure to individual-level census data for the period 1850 to 1880 to study the impact of the diffusion of the railroad -- a key component of the Transportation Revolution -- on human capital investment. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that gaining access to rail transportation in a county significantly increases the likelihood of school attendance among children ages 6-16. The treatment effect of the railroad is robust to controls for demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, and location, and is also similar in magnitude for boys and girls. Causal mechanisms are explored, including the effects of rail on the supply of schools through higher property values.