How Economics Shapes Science

How Economics Shapes Science

Author: Paula Stephan

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2015-09-07

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0674267559

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The beauty of science may be pure and eternal, but the practice of science costs money. And scientists, being human, respond to incentives and costs, in money and glory. Choosing a research topic, deciding what papers to write and where to publish them, sticking with a familiar area or going into something new—the payoff may be tenure or a job at a highly ranked university or a prestigious award or a bump in salary. The risk may be not getting any of that. At a time when science is seen as an engine of economic growth, Paula Stephan brings a keen understanding of the ongoing cost-benefit calculations made by individuals and institutions as they compete for resources and reputation. She shows how universities offload risks by increasing the percentage of non-tenure-track faculty, requiring tenured faculty to pay salaries from outside grants, and staffing labs with foreign workers on temporary visas. With funding tight, investigators pursue safe projects rather than less fundable ones with uncertain but potentially path-breaking outcomes. Career prospects in science are increasingly dismal for the young because of ever-lengthening apprenticeships, scarcity of permanent academic positions, and the difficulty of getting funded. Vivid, thorough, and bold, How Economics Shapes Science highlights the growing gap between the haves and have-nots—especially the vast imbalance between the biomedical sciences and physics/engineering—and offers a persuasive vision of a more productive, more creative research system that would lead and benefit the world.


Keys to the City

Keys to the City

Author: Michael Storper

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-07-21

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1400846269

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Why do some cities grow economically while others decline? Why do some show sustained economic performance while others cycle up and down? In Keys to the City, Michael Storper, one of the world's leading economic geographers, looks at why we should consider economic development issues within a regional context--at the level of the city-region--and why city economies develop unequally. Storper identifies four contexts that shape urban economic development: economic, institutional, innovational and interactional, and political. The book explores how these contexts operate and how they interact, leading to developmental success in some regions and failure in others. Demonstrating that the global economy is increasingly driven by its major cities, the keys to the city are the keys to global development. In his conclusion, Storper specifies eight rules of economic development targeted at policymakers. Keys to the City explains why economists, sociologists, and political scientists should take geography seriously.


Humanomics

Humanomics

Author: Vernon L. Smith

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-01-24

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1107199379

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Articulates Adam Smith's model of human sociality, illustrated in experimental economic games that relate easily to business and everyday life. Shows how to re-humanize the study of economics in the twenty-first century by integrating Adam Smith's two great books into contemporary empirical analysis.


Economic Lives

Economic Lives

Author: Viviana A. Zelizer

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-09-27

Total Pages: 495

ISBN-13: 1400836255

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Revealing the human side of economic life Over the past three decades, economic sociology has been revealing how culture shapes economic life even while economic facts affect social relationships. This work has transformed the field into a flourishing and increasingly influential discipline. No one has played a greater role in this development than Viviana Zelizer, one of the world's leading sociologists. Economic Lives synthesizes and extends her most important work to date, demonstrating the full breadth and range of her field-defining contributions in a single volume for the first time. Economic Lives shows how shared cultural understandings and interpersonal relations shape everyday economic activities. Far from being simple responses to narrow individual incentives and preferences, economic actions emerge, persist, and are transformed by our relations to others. Distilling three decades of research, the book offers a distinctive vision of economic activity that brings out the hidden meanings and social actions behind the supposedly impersonal worlds of production, consumption, and asset transfer. Economic Lives ranges broadly from life insurance marketing, corporate ethics, household budgets, and migrant remittances to caring labor, workplace romance, baby markets, and payments for sex. These examples demonstrate an alternative approach to explaining how we manage economic activity—as well as a different way of understanding why conventional economic theory has proved incapable of predicting or responding to recent economic crises. Providing an important perspective on the recent past and possible futures of a growing field, Economic Lives promises to be widely read and discussed.


Identity Economics

Identity Economics

Author: George A. Akerlof

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-01-21

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 140083418X

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How identity influences the economic choices we make Identity Economics provides an important and compelling new way to understand human behavior, revealing how our identities—and not just economic incentives—influence our decisions. In 1995, economist Rachel Kranton wrote future Nobel Prize-winner George Akerlof a letter insisting that his most recent paper was wrong. Identity, she argued, was the missing element that would help to explain why people—facing the same economic circumstances—would make different choices. This was the beginning of a fourteen-year collaboration—and of Identity Economics. The authors explain how our conception of who we are and who we want to be may shape our economic lives more than any other factor, affecting how hard we work, and how we learn, spend, and save. Identity economics is a new way to understand people's decisions—at work, at school, and at home. With it, we can better appreciate why incentives like stock options work or don't; why some schools succeed and others don't; why some cities and towns don't invest in their futures—and much, much more. Identity Economics bridges a critical gap in the social sciences. It brings identity and norms to economics. People's notions of what is proper, and what is forbidden, and for whom, are fundamental to how hard they work, and how they learn, spend, and save. Thus people's identity—their conception of who they are, and of who they choose to be—may be the most important factor affecting their economic lives. And the limits placed by society on people's identity can also be crucial determinants of their economic well-being.


Doughnut Economics

Doughnut Economics

Author: Kate Raworth

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing

Published: 2018-03-08

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1603587969

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Economics is the mother tongue of public policy. It dominates our decision-making for the future, guides multi-billion-dollar investments, and shapes our responses to climate change, inequality, and other environmental and social challenges that define our times. Pity then, or more like disaster, that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet are still taught in college courses worldwide and still used to address critical issues in government and business alike. That’s why it is time, says renegade economist Kate Raworth, to revise our economic thinking for the 21st century. In Doughnut Economics, she sets out seven key ways to fundamentally reframe our understanding of what economics is and does. Along the way, she points out how we can break our addiction to growth; redesign money, finance, and business to be in service to people; and create economies that are regenerative and distributive by design. Named after the now-iconic “doughnut” image that Raworth first drew to depict a sweet spot of human prosperity (an image that appealed to the Occupy Movement, the United Nations, eco-activists, and business leaders alike), Doughnut Economics offers a radically new compass for guiding global development, government policy, and corporate strategy, and sets new standards for what economic success looks like. Raworth handpicks the best emergent ideas—from ecological, behavioral, feminist, and institutional economics to complexity thinking and Earth-systems science—to address this question: How can we turn economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive, into economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow? Simple, playful, and eloquent, Doughnut Economics offers game-changing analysis and inspiration for a new generation of economic thinkers.


American Higher Education Since World War II

American Higher Education Since World War II

Author: Roger L. Geiger

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-05-25

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 0691216924

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A masterful history of the postwar transformation of American higher education In the decades after World War II, as government and social support surged and enrollments exploded, the role of colleges and universities in American society changed dramatically. Roger Geiger provides an in-depth history of this remarkable transformation, taking readers from the GI Bill and the postwar expansion of higher education to the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, desegregation and coeducation, and the ascendancy of the modern research university. He demonstrates how growth has been the defining feature of modern higher education, but how each generation since the war has pursued it for different reasons. Sweeping in scope and richly insightful, this groundbreaking book provides the context we need to understand the complex issues facing our colleges and universities today, from rising inequality and skyrocketing costs to deficiencies in student preparedness and lax educational standards.


Innovation and Public Policy

Innovation and Public Policy

Author: Austan Goolsbee

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-03-25

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 022680559X

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Using the latest empirical and conceptual research for readers in economics, business, and policy, this volume surveys the key components of innovation policy and the social returns to innovation investment. In advanced economies like the United States, innovation has long been recognized as a central force for increasing economic prosperity and human welfare. Today, the US government promotes innovation through various mechanisms, including tax credits for private-sector research, grant support for basic and applied research, and institutions like the Small Business Innovation Research Program of the National Science Foundation. Drawing on the latest empirical and conceptual research, Innovation and Public Policy surveys the key components of innovation policy and the social returns to innovation investment. It examines mechanisms that can advance the pace of invention and innovative activity, including expanding the research workforce through schooling and immigration policy and funding basic research. It also considers scientific grant systems for funding basic research, including those at institutions like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and investigates the role of entrepreneurship policy and of other institutions that promote an environment conducive to scientific breakthroughs.


The Collaborative Era in Science

The Collaborative Era in Science

Author: Caroline S. Wagner

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-10-25

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 3319949861

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In recent years a global network of science has emerged as a result of thousands of individual scientists seeking to collaborate with colleagues around the world, creating a network which rises above national systems. The globalization of science is part of the underlying shift in knowledge creation generally: the collaborative era in science. Over the past decade, the growth in the amount of knowledge and the speed at which it is available has created a fundamental shift—where data, information, and knowledge were once scarce resources, they are now abundantly available. Collaboration, openness, customer- or problem-focused research and development, altruism, and reciprocity are notable features of abundance, and they create challenges that economists have not yet studied. This book defines the collaborative era, describes how it came to be, reveals its internal dynamics, and demonstrates how real-world practitioners are changing to take advantage of it. Most importantly, the book lays out a guide for policymakers and entrepreneurs as they shift perspectives to take advantage of the collaborative era in order to create social and economic welfare.


Thinking about Science

Thinking about Science

Author: Ferric C. Fang

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2023-10-09

Total Pages: 549

ISBN-13: 1683674367

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Thinking about Science: Good Science, Bad Science, and How to Make It Better A riveting exploration of the world of science, diving headfirst into its triumphs and tribulations. Penned by seasoned microbiologists Ferric C. Fang and Arturo Casadevall, this book offers a comprehensive analysis of the scientific enterprise through various lenses, including historical, philosophical, and personal. From their unique vantage points as researchers, clinicians, and educators, Fang and Casadevall dissect the intricate mechanisms of science, shedding light on its strengths and weaknesses. Through engaging historical anecdotes, personal narratives, and insightful academic studies, they present a candid evaluation of sciences performance, including a thought-provoking examination of its role during the COVID-19 pandemic. A must-read for anyone curious about the present predicaments and future potential of science, Thinking about Science: Good Science, Bad Science, and How to Make It Better is more than just a book; its a roadmap to understanding and improving the scientific endeavor for the benefit of society at large. The authors have given us a thoughtful description of science and the joy of discovery, an unflinching diagnosis of where improvements are needed, and recommendations for remedies well worth considering. Scientists, science and society would benefit if this book were read by both future and established scientists, as well as the administrators, policymakers, and regulators who are in a position to help us do better. Michael Kalichman, UC San Diego With a deep understanding of the profound impact of science on society, the authors provide thought-provoking perspectives on changes in the scientific enterprise that will support sustainable, equitable practices, and engender public trust. An engaging read for everyone with an interest in science or science policy. Stanley Maloy, San Diego State University