Science-Based Business Initiative SeminarsSEWP in cooperation with the SBBI at the Harvard Business School has been a regular part of a Fall and spring lecture series that meets at the Harvard Business School and other weeks at the Department of Economics, Harvard University.
Upcoming Seminar :
Galit Eizman,
Research Scholar,
Economics Dept., Harvard University
"Brain Drain: a Scale of Signaling Gaps? Lessons from US-Israel Case"
April 26, 2013
12-1:30pm,
Baker Library 103
Harvard Business School
Abstract: What differentiates between the decision to return to your home country after a period of specialization and research training (as doctoral or post doctoral studies) in a foreign country, and the decision to stay in the foreign country after this period, create your academic career there and immigrate? The claim examined in this paper is that endogenous scale of signaling gaps is a key determinant in the academic immigration decision, namely the "brain drain". Based on the case of US and Israel, a theoretical paradox model is presented, where the signals from high-ranked institutions in large country are necessary for academic promotion in low-ranked institutions of small country, but at the same time provide a strong motivation for staying abroad. Empirical evidence from individuals data base of Postsecondary Faculty in USA is presented. Policy implications, as the force for changing the equilibrium in the model are examined, one of which is creating an arena of "brain circulation" between countries.
To RSVP or for questions on a seminar or to join the mailing list or arrange parking, please contact sbbi@hbs.edu.
Past topics included:
Do Tax Credits Stimulate R&D Spending? The Effect of the R&D Tax Credit in its First Decade
Building Sustainable Companies in the Age of Capital Efficiency
From Lab Bench to Innovation: Critical Challenges to Nascent Academic Entrepreneurs
Effects of Changes in Federal Funding for Academic Life Sciences R&D: Crowding-In versus Crowding-Out in the
Post-Doubling Era
How a Non-Scientist Adds Value to Biopharmaceutical Research and Development
Experiences in the Emerging Profession of Technology-Based Entrepreneuring
Challenges Facing the 21st Century University: A View from the Office of Institutional Research
Globalization of Science and Engineering Research Within and Across Countries
Healthcare Venture Capital - from a practitioner's point of view
Analyzing Collaboration Using Harvard Catalyst Profiles
The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change
Driving Innovation at the Intersection of Science and Application: The Power of Pasteur's Quadrant
Lobbying, Congressional Oversight and Agency Allocations in U.S. Science Policy: Evidence from Federal Funding for Rare Diseases
ComparativeEffectiveness Research and Health Expenditures in the Health Reform Era
Transforming Biogen Idec
Where Do Firms Patent? Measuring Intra-Firm Spillovers for R&D
Brave Blue World - new trends, emerging technologies and market opportunities
Designing Markets for Prediction
The Market for Patents: Themes Developed From the Files of One Million Recent Patent Applications
Commercializing Technology from University Research
Scale-Adjusted Indicators of Research Activity: The case of Scientific Collaboration
The Future of Engineering in the USA
Conference, November 17, 2008, held at Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, Rutgers University in cooperation with Labor & Worklife Program, Harvard Law School and SEWP -
[More information to come]
The Labor & Worklife Program at Harvard Law School
and the [National Bureau of Economic Research] (NBER)
[SEWP Digest: Offshoring, PhDs, the Year 2009 in Review, and more, Winter 2010 ]
Previous Editions of SEWP Digest:
[ SEWP Digest: President-Elect Obama and S&E Workers, December 2008 ]
[ SEWP Digest: Nanotechnology & Society II, June 2008
]
[ SEWP Digest: Measuring Innovation in Science and Engineering, February 2008
]
[SEWP Digest, Nanotechnology Edition, November 2007]
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.
Paula Stephan is Professor of Economics at Georgia State University and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research working on SEWP. She has served on the Board on Higher Education and Workforce at the NRC, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences Council, and the Social, Behavioral, and Economics Advisory Committee at the NSF.
Book Review from Kent Anderson and “The Scholarly Kitchen” blog: [Go to Blog]
Interview with Kent Anderson at “The Scholarly Kitchen”: [Go to interview]
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The Harvard Medical School Catalyst is an over $200 million HMS and HMS affiliate project to improve clinical and translational research. From their website: the purpose of Catalyst is to develop "systematic way[s] for investigators from disparate disciplines and institutions to find each other and form teams, to gain open access to tools and technologies, and to obtain seed funding to embark upon new areas of investigation. This demands a systematic effort to remove the barriers and obstacles to cross-institutional collaboration. A catalyst lowers the barriers to reaction, and thus speeds a reaction that would normally have occurred at a much slower rate. Speeding the reduction of human illness is the only function of the Harvard Catalyst."
SEWP is working with the Lee Nadler, the Director of Catalyst and the PI on the founding NIH grants. He has two pilot projects. One combines an "open science" platform to develop new research strategies to combat disease with a novel team-building process to implement these strategies. The "open science" part will, hopefully, generate novel strategies that will be successful where previous strategies have failed because they arise from skill sets and perspectives that are traditionally not utilized. The team-building is novel because of incentives for collaboration across disciplines and institutions.
The second project addresses the waste due to duplication in medical science. This pilot catalogues and uploads into a virtual network information about research resources located within research laboratories in nine universities across the U.S. These resources include reagents, tissue samples, mice, lab equipment. The idea here is by making these resources that are available for swapping known, "eagle-i" (as it has been dubbed) will greatly reduce the cost of science, increase research productivity, and increase participation and diversity in science.
According to a report of May 2011 by The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation covering the years 2000-2008, the United States ended up “ranked 22nd out of 30 countries in government-funded university research and 21st in business-funded university research.” The researchers suggest that with the long-term decline of several centralized corporate R&D labs, it is crucial that university institutions pick up the slack for what they regard as lackluster R&D investment in the USA: [Read Article]
Nevertheless, a survey of the National Science Foundation indicates that during FY 2009 and FY2010, university R&D spending took a notably upward swing with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Published in March 2012, the NSF found in its Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey that “When adjusted for inflation, higher education R&D rose by 6.0% in FY 2010”: [Read Article ]
With Washington facing Tea Party-inspired demands for government rollback and bipartisan calls for fiscal austerity, universities will find daunting challenges ahead in trying to build upon the ARRA surge in R&D spending. The U.S. continues to lead the world in absolute R&D spending, with $427.2 billion in gross expenditures on R&D (PPP adjusted) during 2011. Building upon a 22 percent annual rate of growth in R&D spending between 1996 and 2007, China came in second in 2011 at $174.9 billion, according to Battelle and R&D Magazine.
The economics blogger Mike Mandel found that 35 percent of college graduates have a degree beyond the B.A., up from 32.7 percent in 1999. ant to help foster innovation." The growth is at the masters (and professional) level, however: the proportion of workers with Ph.D's is on a slight downward curve, dipping under 4.5 percent in 2007 and still dropping. While the inflation-adusted earnings of workers with bachelor's or masters degrees have increased very slightly since 1999--a rise of one percent or less--the story was quite different for the doctorate. Employees with Ph.D.'s can expect to earn 10 percent less, in real dollars, than they would have a decade ago.
Federal funding of academic science and engineering (S&E) R&D failed to outpace inflation for the second year in a row.
According to a study by NSF a 2-year decline in federal funding in constant dollars is unprecedented for this data series, which began in 1972
[Read Full Report]
University of California Post doc Union Wins Official Recognition
After a failed attempts in 2006, the PRO/UAW, has successfully organized the post docs on the 10 University of California (UC) campuses. The move brings an estimated 10% of U.S. post docs into UAW. The union faced no noticeable opposition..
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The Future of the Biomedical Sciences
Paula Stephan, SEWP network member and economist at Georgia State University, spoke about the future of the biomedical sciences in her talk: "Early Careers for Biomedical Scientists: Doubling (and Troubling) Outcomes" at Harvard University on Feb. 27th, 2007. The message: employment opportunities are getting worse for future biologists a trend that has to be reversed for the future of the biomedical sciences in the US.
***NEW***
Call for Proposals – Initial Access to Nanobank Data
Be One of the First to Tap into the Nanobank!
By Donna K. Ginther and Shulamit Kahn
Many studies have shown that women are under-represented in tenured ranks in the sciences.
We evaluate whether gender differences in the likelihood of obtaining a tenure track job,
promotion to tenure, and promotion to full professor explain these facts using the 1973-2001
Survey of Doctorate Recipients.
[full paper]
By George Borjas
The rapid growth in the number of foreign students enrolled in American universities has transformed the higher education system, particularly at the graduate level. [full paper]
Improving the Postdoctoral Experience: An Empirical ApproachBy Geoff Davis
Recent reports have called for changes to the training of postdoctoral scientists and
engineers. We tested the hypothesis that the practices advocated make a measurable difference
in the experiences and productivity of postdoctoral researchers...
[full paper]
For all recent articles: [full article list]
