No, the Government Isn’t “Stealing” the Coronavirus Vaccine
Poor coordination on the part of the federal government in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with a lack of preparedness, has led to some very strange cases of the federal [...]
Tax Credits and Small Firm R&D Spending
In 2004, Canada changed the eligibility rules for its Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SRED) tax credit, which provides tax incentives for R&D conducted by small private firms. Difference-in-difference estimates [...]
Who’s Afraid of the National Emergency Library?
Over the past month, we have seen considerable outrage and excitement over the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library, an online source of 1.4 million books that are free to borrow [...]
This Week in Intellectual Property, May 5th
Rent Check Brett Stephens has written a glowing profile of Gilead in which he critiques big Pharma's critics, but these uncritical defenses ignore the very real criticisms against the pharmaceutical [...]
Bret Stephens’ Pharmapologetics
In his New York Times column, Bret Stephens wrote about the promise of the antiviral drug remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19. The column mostly focuses the efforts of scientists [...]
This Week in Intellectual Property, April 7th
Rent Check Richard Epstein's models on the spread of COVID-19 have been proven wrong, but his reluctance to abandon the assumptions that inform his model is similar to problems in [...]
Advance Market Commitments: Insights from Theory and Experience
Ten years ago, donors committed $1.5 billion to a pilot Advance Market Commitment (AMC) to help purchase pneumococcal vaccine for low-income countries. The AMC aimed to encourage the development of [...]
Assumptions Separate Theory from Ideology
For those who have not read Isaac Chotiner’s interview of Richard Epstein on the latter’s “Coronavirus Perspective” (originally titled “Coronavirus isn’t a Pandemic”), please do. Epstein’s article (after correcting an [...]
This Week in Intellectual Property, March 31st
News and Commentary The COVID-19 outbreak makes getting physical books from the library difficult, and the need to keep people distracted at home all the more important. That's why Internet [...]
Scientific Grant Funding
This chapter provides an overview of grant funding as an innovation policy tool aimed at both practitioners and science policy scholars. We first discuss how grants relate to other contractual [...]