The “Science of Science Policy”: reflections on the important questions and the challenges they present

Developing the “Science of Science Policy” will require data collection and analysis related to the processes of innovation and technological change, and the effects of government policy on those processes. There has been much work on these topics in the last three decades, but there remain difficult problems of finding proxies for subtle concepts, endogeneity, distinguishing private and social returns, untangling cumulative effects, measuring the impact of government programs in a true “but for” sense, and sorting out national and global effects. I offer observations on how to think about these issues. This paper was presented as the Keynote Address at the NSF Workshop on Advancing Measures of Innovation: Knowledge Flows, Business Metrics, and Measurement Strategies, Arlington, VA, June 2006.     

The importance of “spillovers” in the policy mission of the advanced technology program

Government policies like the Advanced Technology Program (“ATP”) are intended, at least in part, to remedy the “market failure” inherent in the fact that a significant portion of the social benefits of new knowledge and technology are not captured by a firm that invests in R&D. ATP’s project selection, and its evaluation of the impact of its program, can be made more effective by explicitly incorporating the analysis of such “spillovers.” For project selection, this means identifying technological, organizational and economic factors that tend to oint to a large “spillover gap,” or deviation between the social and private rates of return to a proposed project. For program evaluation and assessment, it means adapting existing study methods that measure social returns to innovation in ways that explicitly capture spillover effects. This paper is based on a study that I performed for the ATP, Economic Analysis of Research Spillovers: Implications for the Advanced Technology Program, NIST GCR 97-708. I have benefited from comments and useful discussions with Zvi Griliches, Jeanne Powell, Rosalie Ruegg, and Richard Spivack. Some of the ideas in this paper grew out of previous joint research with James Adams. The views expressed herein are my own, however, and should not be attributed to any of these individuals or to the ATP.     

Power Dynamics in an Experimental Game

We introduce a new experimental method for studying power. Drawing from multiple theoretical perspectives, we conceptualize power as relational and structural, as well as comprised of different forms through which basic human needs can be met. Thus, the method we introduce examines how, when faced with a particular need, people use multiple forms of power concurrently and within a “field of influence,” namely, the other players in a game. This enabled us to examine how one form of power is transformed into another and how power is transferred from one player to another through interaction, as well as to measure power as behavior, as the exercise of choice, as potential, and as outcomes. Two experiments using egalitarian start conditions and a survivable ecology demonstrated that participants used power to gain more power, creating inequality. Being the target of force made some players unable to “survive” in the local ecology. Theoretical and methodological issues in the study of power are discussed and the application of our game method to the study of power in other fields is considered.     

Christian Nationalism and Political Violence: Victimhood,Racial Identity,Conspiracy, and Support for the Capitol Attacks

Political Behavior - What explains popular support for political violence in the contemporary United States, particularly the anti-institutional mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol in January 2021?...