Dynamic Shortages and Price Rises: The Engineer-Scientist Case

Arrow, Kenneth J.; Capron, William M.

doi:10.2307/1883726

Cited by 129 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Early studies by Arrow and Capron (1959) and Blank and Stigler (1957) defined shortages as situations where demand for labor increases faster than supply can grow-a condition sometimes observed in the market for engineers during economic booms. Although rapid increases in…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is particularly the case when the labor market is highly regulated by government. If rates of pay are set at a low level, the labor market will clear in an economic sense, but there may be what Arrow and Capron (1959) call a "social demand shortage," that is, the market produces less than what society would like.…”

Section: How Long Must a Market Have Excess Vacancies Before It Is Comentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Untitled

2013

Employ. Res.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: How Long Must a Market Have Excess Vacancies Before It Is Comentioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

2013

Employ. Res.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…What we have shown in this paper is that an important ingredient in the assessment of the effects of these increases is the issue of the flexibility of scientific labor supply in response to increases in its wage. Although this topic is an old one, it usually goes under the heading of "manpower planning" and is often treated as a branch of the labor economics literature that is separate from the R&D and technology policy literature (see, for example, Arrow and Capron 1959, Lerner 1992, or Stephan 1996. Our first proud conclusion from the analysis above is that the time has come to integrate the understanding and results from this literature into the study of R&D investment decisions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heart of Darkness: Modeling Public-Private Funding Interactions Inside the R&D Black Box

David

Hall

2000

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper is a first step toward closing the analytical gap in the extensive literature on the results of interactions between public and private R&D expenditures, and their joint effects on the economy.Econometric studies in this area report a plethora of sometimes confusing and frequently contradictory estimates of the response of company financed R&D to changes in the level and nature of public R&D expenditure, but the necessary theoretical framework within which the empirical results can be interpreted is seldom provided. A major cause of "inconsistencies" in the empirical literature is the failure to recognize key differences among the various policy "experiments" being considered -depending upon the economy in which they are embedded, and the type of public sector R&D spending that is contemplated. Using a simple, stylized structural model, we identify the main channels of impact of public R&D. We thus can characterize the various effects, distinguishing between short-run and long-run impacts that would show up in simple regression analyses of nominal public and private R&D expenditure variables. Within the context of our simple model it is possible to offer interpretations that shed light on recent cross-section and panel data findings at both high (i.e. national) and low (specific technology area) levels of aggregation. I. BLACK BOXES TYPICALLY HOLD MORE HEAT THAN LIGHTThe interior of the black box of technology by now has become increasing crowded with economists of various stripes, and although growing areas are illuminated by the accumulating results of their investigations, some large regions of darkness remain. 1One of the darkest patches of terrain is the realm where public and private R&D interact. It is not that this "heart of darkness" has remained infrequently visited. Quite the contrary: a survey of the econometric literature (which we undertook in collaboration with Andrew Toole) has identified more than 50 papers, most of them quite recent, that seek to address in one way or another the issue of the nature of those interactions. 2The fact that the question keeps being raised, however, is in this case symptomatic not only of the interest that attaches to it but of the elusiveness of a satisfyingly conclusive answer.Quite obviously it is a matter of considerable importance for science and technology policy-makers to know whether government R&D expenditures and companyfinanced R&D investments behave like substitutes or like complements. Insofar as the rationale for government support of R&D rests on the presupposition that too little research would be performed were the private sector to be left to its own devices, intense concern surrounds the possibility that public allocations for that purpose are being substituted for investments that firms would otherwise undertake. There is, in short, a worry that private R&D may be "crowded out" and the use of taxpayers money rendered far less effectual than might be supposed in augmenting society's investment in generating technological progre...

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%