"Innovation and entrepreneurship are ubiquitous today, both as fields of study and as starting points for conversations among experts in government and economic development. But while these areas on continue to attract public and private investments, many measurements of their resulting economic growth-including productivity growth and business dynamism-have remained modest. Why this difference? Because not all business sectors are the same, and the transformative gains of some industries have been offset by stagnation or contraction in others. Accordingly, a nuanced understanding of the economy requires a nuanced understanding of where innovation and entrepreneurship occur and where they matter. Answering these questions allows for strategic public investment and the infrastructure for economic growth.The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth, the latest entry in the NBER conference series, seeks to codify these answers. The editors leverage industry studies to identify specific examples of productivity improvements enabled by innovation and entrepreneurship, including those from new production technologies, increased competition, new organizational forms, and other means. Taken together, the volume illuminates whether the contribution of innovation and entrepreneurship to economic growth is likely to be concentrated, be it selected sectors or more broadly"--

This paper investigates the main postulations of the R&D based growth models that innovation is created in the R&D sectors and it enables sustainable economic growth, provided that there are constant returns to innovation in terms of R&D. The analysis employs various panel data techniques and uses patent and R&D data for 20 OECD and 10 Non-OECD countries for the period 1981-97. The results suggest a positive relationship between per capita GDP and innovation in both OECD and non-OECD countries, while the effect of R&D stock on innovation is significant only in the OECD countries with large markets. Although these results provide support for endogenous growth models, there is no evidence for constant returns to innovation in terms of R&D, implying that innovation does not lead to permanent increases in economic growth. However, these results do not necessarily suggest a rejection of R&D based growth models, given that neither patent nor R&D data capture the full range of innovation and R&D activities.

Christine Greenhalgh explains the complex process of innovation & how it sustains the growth of firms, industries & economies, combining microeconomic & macroeconomic analysis.

I think this book is a great achievement. It is packed with useful information and thought-provoking analysis and discussion. The work on technological development is, especially, a very valuable original contribution to the work in this field. The book illuminates the technological trajectory so often ignored by economists, but which underlies Schumpeter s "clusters" of innovations, and the emphasis on trunk innovations and analysis of their role is of particular interest. Christopher Freeman, SPRU Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex, UK and Maastricht University, The Netherlands This pathbreaking book addresses the economics of technological change as revealed by a unique methodology that uncovers the true nature of technological development. Masaaki Hirooka bases this new approach to the economics of technological change on the recognition of the nonlinear dynamic nature of innovation. In order to provide a richer understanding of technological development, the book focuses on the period of innovation prior to market launch, grounding the analysis within a distinct innovation paradigm. This is expressed using three logistic trajectories technology, development and diffusion which make it possible to interpret and better understand technology foresight, infrastructure formation, long business cycles and national innovation systems. The author emphasizes the importance of the timing of innovation commitment, knowledge transfer between and within these trajectories, and the evolutionary character of innovation. Those with an interest in economics, macroeconomics, technological change and evolutionary economics will find this book to be a highly stimulating and fascinating read.

"The challenges facing agriculture are plenty. Along with the world's growing population and diminishing amounts of water and arable land, the gradual increase in severe weather presents new challenges and imperatives for producing new, more resilient crops to feed a more crowded planet in the twenty-first century. Innovation has historically helped agriculture keep pace with earth's social, population, and ecological changes. In the last 50 years, mechanical, biological, and chemical innovations have more than doubled agricultural output while barely changing input quantities. The ample investment behind these innovations was available because of a high rate of return: a 2007 paper found that the median ROI in agriculture was 45 percent between 1965 and 2005. This landscape has changed. Today many of the world's wealthier countries have scaled back their share of GDP devoted to agricultural R&D amid evidence of diminishing returns. Universities, which have historically been a major source of agricultural innovation, increasingly depend on funding from industry rather than government to fund their research. As Upton Sinclair wrote of the effects industry influences, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." In this volume of the NBER Conference Report series, editor Petra Moser offers an empirical, applied-economic framework to the different elements of agricultural R&D, particularly as they relate to the shift from public to private funding. Individual chapters examine the sources of agricultural knowledge and investigate challenges for measuring the returns to the adoption of new agricultural technologies, examine knowledge spillovers from universities to agricultural innovation, and explore interactions between university engagement and scientific productivity. Additional analysis of agricultural venture capital point to it as an emerging and future source of resource in this essential domain"--

Leading international scholars provide a timely reconsideration of how and why entrepreneurship matters for economic development, particularly in emerging and developing economies. The book critically dissects the evolving relationship between entrepreneurs and the state.

This work closely examines the strengths and weaknesses of the Chinese economic system to discover where the nation may be headed and what the Chinese experience reveals about emerging market economies.