Modern transportation infrastructure can help foster cheaper travel and a better-connected economy. This column shows that improvements in transportation can affect the location choices of firms in ways that are often beneficial to large regions, but may be detrimental to small intermediate regions through job losses. Using data from Japan’s high speed rail network, the authors confirm that ‘in-between’ municipalities that are connected to the network witness a sizeable decrease in employment.
Productivity and Innovation
In recent decades, US defence R&D seems to have lost its lustre. To combat the declining innovation, in 2018 the US Air Force reformed its contracting procedures to allow applicants more freedom to suggest projects with potential military benefits. This column uses data on applications and winners from such competitions to assess the effects of the reform. It finds that the ‘open’ programme attracts new and younger firms, increases future venture capital investment, and increases patenting. Government R&D could thus benefit from more bottom-up, decentralised approaches to promote innovation in the public sector.
The future of productivity and economic growth in the US and Europe is uncertain. This column reviews evidence from eight economic sectors to lay out the key conditions for sustained recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. It suggests that the weak productivity growth that followed the Global Crisis can be averted if private and public sectors act together to strengthen demand and diffuse supply-side restructuring to all firms.
Appropriation artists incorporate borrowed images from different sources to produce new compositions. These artists not only risk infringing copyright, but also leave intermediaries such as auction houses at risk of litigation. This column considers changes to the secondary market for appropriation art in the aftermath of a 2013 decision by the US Court of Appeals. Providing quantitative evidence of how the ‘fair use’ defence has affected the secondary arts market, the column questions whether the existing framework promotes or hampers innovation in the art world.
The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a radical shift in how much people work from home. This column argues that, through learning and technology adoption effects, this enforced shift has boosted the productivity of working from home, which will lead to higher lifetime incomes for the working population. While these productivity gains would likely have happened eventually, the pandemic accelerated this process.
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