Author : Camilla Alexandra Hrdy
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 50 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (13 download)
Book Synopsis Innovation Or Jobs? An Inconvenient Truth About Public Financing for 'Innovation' by : Camilla Alexandra Hrdy
Download or read book Innovation Or Jobs? An Inconvenient Truth About Public Financing for 'Innovation' written by Camilla Alexandra Hrdy and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public finance -- whether in the form of grants, subsidies, or tax credits -- is increasingly being cast as the panacea to either a world of IP and all its foibles, or a world in which innovators have insufficient incentives to undertake risky research. The idea is that, rather than supporting innovation through the gifting of exclusive rights like patents, government can use taxpayer dollars to support research and development activities directly. This article casts doubt on the notion that public finance can ever provide a suitable alternative for incentivizing innovation. It makes this point by examining financial subsidies currently offered by U.S. state governments. Each year, state governments across the U.S. purport to award billions of dollars in public financing for “innovation.” But it turns out these so-called innovation incentives typically have little to do with encouraging novelty or inventiveness. They are in reality designed to promote politically attractive goals: principally, the goal of job creation. This article identifies the phenomenon -- essentially, jobs programs dressed up as innovation incentives -- and reveals why it could be highly problematic for innovation policy. By diverting investment towards subject matter that is labor- intensive, these incentives may end up encouraging developments that are the opposite of “innovative,” in the ordinary sense of the word. Those who support relying more heavily on public finance as an innovation policy tool need to confront the reality that, when taxpayer money is on the line, political goals may well trump the desire to reward truly innovative endeavors.