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Essays in Economics of Innovations
Hrendash, Taras ; Gaule, Patrick (advisor) ; Ganguli, Ina (referee) ; de Rassenfosse, Gaetan (referee)
This thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter proposes a novel multi-layer clustering algorithm aimed to identify technology clusters from the network of collaboration ties among innovators with geo-coded locations. Using this novel algorithm, I identify innovation clusters in the U.S. Patent Inventor Database by simultaneously exploring two dimensions: the spatial distribution of inventors and the patterns of interconnections among them. Based on the clusters identified, I show that a combination of proximity and interconnectedness of inventors within the cluster boundaries is related to higher quality of innovations than those produced outside the clusters. In the second chapter, I exploit the introduction of the USPTO's Prioritized Examination (Track One) Program to capture the impact of shortened pendency on the likelihood that a pending or granted patent will be commercialized via the transfer of property rights. I find that the Track One program significantly increased the probability of commercial reassignment of applications that were more likely to be prioritized. In the third chapter, joint with Christian Fons-Rosen and Patrick Gaulé, we investigate causes of the ageing of the U.S. scientific workforce. Using novel data on the population of U.S. chemistry faculty members...
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Essays on Environmental and Health Economics
Kyrychenko, Olexiy ; Gaule, Patrick (advisor) ; Fichera, Eleonora (referee) ; Mohnen, Myra (referee)
Essays on Environmental and Health Economics Olexiy Kyrychenko Abstract In the first chapter, we examine the impact of temperature on manufacturing production in India and the underlying mechanisms. Using plant-level manufacturing data and satellite- based temperature estimates from 1998-2007, we find that the relationship between temperature and output exhibits an inverted U-shape, with especially large losses occurring at extreme cold and hot temperatures. Such nonlinearity provides valuable insight into the potential welfare consequences of climate change. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that a 1řC shift in the annual distribution of daily temperature would lead to net losses in manufacturing output of 1.3% or USD 0.6 billion, equivalent to a 0.5% reduction in India's GDP 2007 through the manufacturing sector alone. The estimated temperature-output relationship is driven by the joint effects of temperature on total factor productivity and capital. This finding has important implications for adaptation. The manufacturing sector can adapt to changing climate by reducing the sensitivity of labor productivity to temperature and by making investments in machinery. Labor-related adjustments can also contribute to adaptation by offsetting direct productivity losses or facilitating labor reallocation....
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Essays on Economics of Education and Social Policy
Abramishvili, Zurab ; Gaule, Patrick (advisor) ; Rivkin, Steven (referee) ; Patrinos, Harry Anthony (referee)
In the first chapter of the dissertation, two administrative datasets from the Targeted Social Assistance Program (unconditional cash transfer) and National Assessment and Examination Center in Georgia are merged in order to investigate the impact of an unconditional cash transfer on the university enrollment rate in Georgia. Given that the program recipients were selected by virtue of being below a certain quantitative poverty threshold, this feature of the program is exploited to implement a global regression discontinuity. The study finds a positive impact of cash transfers on enrollment in tertiary education. Specifically, being a recipient of the social assistance program significantly increases a student's likelihood of enrollment, by 6.3%. More importantly, the findings suggest that the observed effect is gender specific: the impact is stronger for males. Male children of a beneficiary family have a 13.4% greater chance of being admitted to university. This marks the first attempt to study such a program in the context of education. The paper contributes to the growing literature on the long-run effects of cash transfers. In the second chapter, the impact on a broad range of outcomes of the same social assistance program in Georgia is examined. An original household survey was developed and...
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Essays in Economics of Innovation
Sidorkin, Oleg ; Gaule, Patrick (advisor) ; Fons-Rosen, Christian (referee) ; Lissoni, Francesco (referee)
This dissertation deals with topics related to innovation, management quality, political economy and corruption. In Chapter 1 (which is co-authored by Martin Srholec), we econometrically test the hypothesis that pre-crisis innovation affected firms' survival odds and performance thereafter using a unique micro dataset of shareholding companies from emerging countries in Eastern and Southern Europe derived from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys. Overall, the results indicate that the innovation-survival connection holds. Nevertheless, firms identified as those that innovated excessively before the crisis turned out to be far more likely to die, whereas cautious innovators came out better off. Firms that stretched their resources too much, or that were too bold, faced dire consequences. If an appetite for risky innovation is sociably desirable and the crisis weeds out viable businesses, including those that may drive the recovery, there is a role for public policy to mitigate the short-lived selection inefficiencies that proliferate during severe recessions. In Chapter 2 we study the impact of management quality on the innovation input and output of firms in ten emerging countries using data from the Management, Organization and Innovation (MOI) Survey. We find the effects of management quality on...
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The Role of Early Intervention on Skill Formation
Borga, Liyousew Gebremedhin ; Gaule, Patrick (advisor) ; Basu, Karna (referee) ; Biroli, Pietro (referee)
In the first chapter, I use time use data from a longitudinal survey (covering Ethiopia, India and Vietnam), to examine how the amount of time children spend on different activities impacts their acquisition of cognitive and noncognitive skills. Modeling the skill formation production function of children and extending the set of inputs to include the child's own time inputs, the study finds that child involvement in work activities (paid or nonpaid) are associated with a reduction in both cognitive and noncognitive achievements. The results imply an indirect adverse effect of child work on skill development through the reduction of hours of study. In the second chapter, using a unique longitudinal survey from Ethiopia, we investigate whether resource constrained parents reinforce or attenuate differences in early abilities between their children. To overcome the potential endogeneity associated with measures of endowment, we construct a measure of human capital at birth that is plausibly net of prenatal investment. Furthermore, we estimate a sibling fixed-effect model to reduce the bias due to unobserved family-specific heterogeneity. We find that parents reinforce educational inequality, as inherently healthy children are more likely to attend preschool, be enrolled in elementary school, and have...
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Essays on Economics of Education and Social Policy
Abramishvili, Zurab ; Gaule, Patrick (advisor) ; Rivkin, Steven (referee) ; Patrinos, Harry Anthony (referee)
In the first chapter of the dissertation, two administrative datasets from the Targeted Social Assistance Program (unconditional cash transfer) and National Assessment and Examination Center in Georgia are merged in order to investigate the impact of an unconditional cash transfer on the university enrollment rate in Georgia. Given that the program recipients were selected by virtue of being below a certain quantitative poverty threshold, this feature of the program is exploited to implement a global regression discontinuity. The study finds a positive impact of cash transfers on enrollment in tertiary education. Specifically, being a recipient of the social assistance program significantly increases a student's likelihood of enrollment, by 6.3%. More importantly, the findings suggest that the observed effect is gender specific: the impact is stronger for males. Male children of a beneficiary family have a 13.4% greater chance of being admitted to university. This marks the first attempt to study such a program in the context of education. The paper contributes to the growing literature on the long-run effects of cash transfers. In the second chapter, the impact on a broad range of outcomes of the same social assistance program in Georgia is examined. An original household survey was developed and...
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An advisor like me? Advisor gender and post-graduate careers in science
Gaulé, Patrick ; Piacentini, M.
We investigate whether having an advisor of the same gender is correlated with the productivity of PhD science students and their propensity to stay in academic science. Our analysis is based on an original dataset covering nearly 20,000 PhD graduates and their advisors from U.S. chemistry departments. We find that students with an advisor of the same gender tend to be more productive during the PhD and more likely to become professors themselves. We suggest that the under-representation of women in science and engineering faculty positions may perpetuate itself through the lower availability of same-gender advisors for female students.
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Essays in Economics of Innovation
Sidorkin, Oleg ; Gaule, Patrick (advisor) ; Fons-Rosen, Christian (referee) ; Lissoni, Francesco (referee)
This dissertation deals with topics related to innovation, management quality, political economy and corruption. In Chapter 1 (which is co-authored by Martin Srholec), we econometrically test the hypothesis that pre-crisis innovation affected firms' survival odds and performance thereafter using a unique micro dataset of shareholding companies from emerging countries in Eastern and Southern Europe derived from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys. Overall, the results indicate that the innovation-survival connection holds. Nevertheless, firms identified as those that innovated excessively before the crisis turned out to be far more likely to die, whereas cautious innovators came out better off. Firms that stretched their resources too much, or that were too bold, faced dire consequences. If an appetite for risky innovation is sociably desirable and the crisis weeds out viable businesses, including those that may drive the recovery, there is a role for public policy to mitigate the short-lived selection inefficiencies that proliferate during severe recessions. In Chapter 2 we study the impact of management quality on the innovation input and output of firms in ten emerging countries using data from the Management, Organization and Innovation (MOI) Survey. We find the effects of management quality on...
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