Paul A. David

Stanford University | SU · Department of Economics

This paper focuses on the interplay between firms and open and collaborative innovation communities. We develop a formal model where both volunteers (agents setting their agendas freely) and firm’s employees (agents whose agenda is mostly set by their employer) participate in the creation of a common artifact. In this framework, we discuss how firm...

The research reported here gives priority to understanding the inter‐temporal resource allocation requirements of a program of technological changes that could halt global warming by completing the transition to a “green” (zero net CO2‐ emission) production regime within the possibly brief finite interval that remains before Earth’s climate is driv...

ABSTRACT The research reported here gives priority to understanding the inter‐temporal resource allocation requirements of a program of technological changes that could halt global warming by completing the transition to a “green” (zero net CO2‐ emission) production regime within the possibly brief finite interval that remains before Earth’s climat...

Smart specialisation is a policy concept that has enjoyed a short but very exciting life! Elaborated by a group of academic “experts” in 2008, it very quickly made a significant impact on the policy audience, particularly in Europe. Such a success story in such a short period of time is a perfect example of “policy running ahead of theory”: while s...

This chapter analyses the relationship between the diffusion of general purpose technologies (GPTs) and surges in the growth of productivity. It first explores the dynamics of GPT diffusion by considering the generic and differentiating aspects of the US experience with industrial electrification and in comparison with that of the UK and Japan. It...

ABSTRACT This paper considers the scientific legacy of Zvi Griliches’ contribution to the economic analysis of the diffusion of technological innovations. It first examines the relationship between Griliches’ pioneering empirical work on the introduction and adoption of hybrid corn and the subsequent development of theoretical models and econometri...

There are three analytically distinct layers of the phenomenon that has been labeled 'the anticommons' and indicted as a potential impediment to innovation resulting from patenting and enforcement of IPR obtained on academic research results. This paper distinguishes among 'search costs', 'transactions costs', and 'multiple marginalization' effects...

This essay begins by looking closely at the underlying structural causes of the discontinuity that appeared in the behavior of the U.S. stock market at 2:40pm in the afternoon of 6th May 2010, because the emblematic “catastrophic” aspect of the collapse of equity prices, and their subsequent equally abrupt rebound, renders these events potentially...

This chapter looks at the institutional infrastructures for global research networks in the public sector. Drawing on the results of a survey and case studies of e-science projects in the United Kingdom, it argues that “soft” institutional infrastructures can facilitate the formation and conduct of collaborative research initiatives in the public s...

Experts examine ways in which the use of increasingly powerful and versatile digital information and communication technologies are transforming research activities across all disciplines. Advances in information and communication technology are transforming the way scholarly research is conducted across all disciplines. The use of increasingly pow...

Experts examine ways in which the use of increasingly powerful and versatile digital information and communication technologies are transforming research activities across all disciplines. Advances in information and communication technology are transforming the way scholarly research is conducted across all disciplines. The use of increasingly pow...

Anyone enquiring about "e-science" is bound to be led to a quotation from John Taylor's (2001) introductory description of this movement's essence as being "about global collaboration in key areas of science and the next generation of infrastructure that will enable it". Although much that has been written about e-science is occupied with the engin...

Public and private policy for the European Research Area has an important role to play in fostering and maintaining the richness and diversity of this region’s “innovation ecology”, especially with respect to the formation and reconfiguration of information connections. But some of the main institutional innovations promoted with a view to enhancin...

This paper considers the scientific legacy of Zvi Griliches’ contribution to the economic analysis of the diffusion of technological innovations. It first examines the relationship between Griliches’ pioneering empirical work on the introduction and adoption of hybrid corn and the subsequent development of theoretical models and econometric researc...

This paper details the statistical sources, methods and findings that underpin the demographic evidence offered by Johansson (2010) in support of her thesis regarding “Europe’s first knowledge-driven mortality transition,” namely the pronounced and sustained rise in the expectations of life that took place among the 17th and early 18th century birt...

This paper reflects on the relevance of "systems-theoretic" approaches to the interdependent policy issues relating to the dynamics of science, technology and innovation and their relationship to economic growth. Considering the approach that characterizes much of the current economics literature's treatment of technology and growth policies, we po...

This contribution examines various aspects of "openness" in research, and seeks to gauge the degree to which contemporary" e-science" practices are congruent with "open science." Norms and practices of openness are held to have been vital for the work of modern scientific communities, but concerns about the growth of stronger technical and institut...

Questions concerning the actual extent of 'openness' of research processes identified with contemporary e-science should address at least two main sets of issues pertaining to the conduct of 'open science.' The first set concerns the terms on which individuals may enter and leave research projects. Who is permitted to join the collaboration? Are al...

This statement is issued by a group of economists and scientists which met at Stanford University on October 18, 2008 to discuss the role of research and development (R&D) in developing effective policies for addressing the adverse potential consequences of climate change. We believe that climate change is a serious issue that governments need to a...

The work we present in this workshop is an abstract describing work in progress. Investigating the underlying principles of any domain knowledge is problematic in the sense that many factors coming into play when trying to simplify or implement basic concepts and principles, often are presumed to be understood by all experts researching that domain...

The significant set of public policy issues for economic analysis that arise from the tensions between the ‘special benefits’ of the Internet as a platform for innovation, and the drawbacks of the “anomalous” features of the Internet viewed as simply one among the array of telecommunications systems, is the focus of discussion in this chapter. Econ...

This short paper on a very big subject deals with a worry - a worry that the present economic crisis is likely to contribute to the already-existing temptations of governmental and private actors alike to behave in a time-inconsistent fashion when responding to the challenge of climate change. The specific concern here is that science and technolog...

Experts examine ways in which the use of increasingly powerful and versatile digital information and communication technologies are transforming research activities across all disciplines. Advances in information and communication technology are transforming the way scholarly research is conducted across all disciplines. The use of increasingly pow...

This report provides a brief overview of work undertaken by members of the research team from the OII and McKinsey Technology Initiative (MTI) on a project investigating the Performance of Distributed Problem Solving Networks (DPSNs).A key assumption of the project was that much had been learned about the rise of new socio-technical organizational...

Introducing an analytical framework that guided the Distributed Problem-Solving Network (DPSN) study, providing a rationale for the case study selection and key theoretical expectations surrounding the choices that face management in deciding whether or not to 'crowdsource' problem-solving.The DPSN project is about 'network enabled' distributed pro...

This paper seeks to close an empirical gap regarding the motivations, personal attributes and behavioral patterns among free/libre and open-source (FLOSS) developers, especially those involved in community-based production, and considers the bearing of its findings on the existing literature and the future directions for research. Respondents to an...

One manifestation of the trend towards the strengthening of copyright protection that has been noticeable during the past two decades is the secular extension of the potential duration during which access to copyrightable materials remains legally restricted. Those restrictions carry clear implications for the current and prospective costs to reade...

In an undertaking such as the U.S. Cyberinfrastructure Initiative, or the UK e-science program, which span many years and comprise a great many projects funded by multiple agencies, it can be very difficult to keep tabs on what everyone is doing. But, it is not impossible. In this paper, we propose the construction of ontologies as a means of monit...

The history of the copyright system appears to be approaching an end. A pressing question now is whether or not the particular manner of its passing will be one that proves seriously destructive for cultural vitality and the advancement of knowledge.

New contributors3 to free (libre) and open software development appear to be socially influenced in their choice of the locus of their first contribution, preferentially joining “packages” or modules within the project code that have attracted many existing developers. This suggests that social links -- in the form of common developers among the or...

This issue of Information Economics and Policy focuses on a fundamental shift in the software industry: the organisation of software production with the aim of disclosure rather than appropriation. Open source software, as it is now most frequently referred to in the academic literature, is simultaneously a means of production, social organisation,...

This essay examines the economics of patronage in the production of knowledge and its influence upon the historical formation of key elements in the ethos and organizational structure of publicly funded `open science.' The emergence during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries of the idea and practice of `open science' was a distinctiv...

The case study of the Mozilla project is focused on the organization of quality control and quality assurance in a distributed innovation environment, and focuses on the coordination of the detection and correction of operating defects ('bugs') in Mozilla's Firefox web-browser. Analyzing two samples of bugs drawn from the 40,000 or so that have res...

A systems analysis perspective is adopted to examine the critical properties of the Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) mode of innovation, as reflected on the SourceForge platform ( SF.net ). This approach re-scales March's ( 1991 ) framework and applies it to characterize the “innovation system” of a “distributed organization” of interacting...

A statement by a group of economists and scientists which met at Stanford University on October 18, 2008 to discuss the role of research and development in developing effective policies for addressing the adverse potential consequences of climate change.

This paper seeks to close an empirical gap regarding the motivations, personal attributes and behavioral patterns among free/libre and open-source (FLOSS) developers, especially those involved in community-based production, and considers the bearing of its findings on the existing literature and the future directions for research. Respondents to an...

This paper reflects on the relevance of “systems-theoretic” approaches to the interdependent policy issues bearing on the dynamics of science, technology and innovation in their relationship to economic growth. Considering the approach that characterizes much of the current economics literature’s treatment of technology and growth policies, we pose...

Introduction The initial contributions to the social science literature addressing the phenomenon of Libre (open-source, free) software have been directed primarily to identifying the motivations underlying the sustained and often intensive engagement of many highly skilled individuals in this non-contractual and unremunerated mode of production. T...

This introduction to the concept of path dependence, its pertinence for the development of historical social science, and its application in economic analysis and economic history, proceeds from intuitive general ideas about history and historicity in narratives. It provides precise definitions of what is meant by describing a dynamical process as...

Innovation and universities' role in commercializing research results: should Europe be imitating America's Bahy–Dole experiment?. To address the complex issue of the evolving role of universities in technological innovation poses a challenge of truly daunting proportions, especially in a brief presentation such as this. The institutional history o...

The past decade has seen remarkable advances in the availability of tools to support scientific collaboration at a distance. This is especially good news for international collaborations, where in the past constraints on collocation and travel have made such collaborations a major challenge. The emergence of advanced cyberinfrastructure and associa...

A new generation of information and communication infrastructures, including advanced Internet computing and Grid technologies, promises more direct and shared access to more widely distributed computing resources than was previously possible. Scientific and technological collaboration, consequently, is more and more dependent upon access to, and s...

This paper presents a stochastic simulation model to study implications of the mechanisms by which individual software developers’ efforts are allocated within large and complex open source software projects. It illuminates the role of different forms of “motivations-at-the-margin” in the micro-level resource allocation process of distributed and d...

This paper examines various aspects of "openness" in research, and seeks to gauge the degree to which escience is congruent with "open science." Norms and practices of openness, arguably, have been vital for the work of modern scientific communities, but concerns about the growth of stronger technical and institutional restraints on access to resea...

Quantitative methods are employed to describe two fundamental processes in the creation of free (libre) and open source software (FLOSS) that are at work in the collaborative development environment of the SourceForge.Net platform: resource mobilization, and “entrepreneurial initiatives” which generate new development projects. The micro dynamics o...

This study aims to isolate and identify the properties of FLOSS development insofar as these can be revealed by examining the ecology of SF.net. It characterizes the contrast between the many lurkers and a much smaller core of entrepreneurial developers who are responsible for launching new projects, and gives an interpretation of the function of p...

This book discusses some of the ways in which studying the economic experiences of societies in the past can contribute to a better understanding of current and future economic issues. It offers a variety of engagements of the 'historian's craft', in the service of enlightened discussions of social and economic policy. It draws upon detailed histor...

ABSTRACT Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi Indian word that translates into English as “life out of balance,” “crazy life,” “life in turmoil,” all meanings consistent with indicating “a way of life which calls for another way of living.” While not wishing to suggest either that the international regime of intellectual property rights protection of scientific...

Introduction: Credo and context I believe that the future of economics as an intellectually exciting discipline lies in its becoming an historical social science. Much of my work as an economic historian has sought to convey a strong sense of how ‘history matters’ in economic affairs by undertaking applied studies, focused on the behaviour of stoch...

The current reconsideration of public research funding policies in the U.S., and U.K. and other industrialized economies makes it important that policy makers and the public understand the valid economic grounds for government support of science. This review article of a book that which argues for the ending of all government support of non-militar...

The progress of scientific and technological knowledge is a cumulative process, one that depends in the long?run on the rapid and widespread disclosure of new findings, so that they may be rapidly discarded if unreliable, or confirmed and brought into fruitful conjunction with other bodies of reliable knowledge. “Open science” institutions provide...

This article provides an introduction to fundamental issues in the development of new knowledge-based economies. After placing their emergence in historical perspective and proposing a theoretical framework that distinguishes knowledge from information, the authors characterize the specific nature of such economies. They go on to deal with some of...

Problematic issues are raised by the expressed intention of the European Commission to promote greater awareness on the part of scientists in the “European Research Area” about intellectual property rights and their uses in the context of “Internet intensive research collaborations.” Promoting greater awareness and encouraging more systematic usage...

Presented to the International Symposium on ECONOMIC CHALLENGES OF THE 21ST CENTURY IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, Oxford, England, 2nd-4th July, 1999 Celebrating the Scholarly Career of Charles H. Feinstein, FBA. Re- examination of early twentieth century American productivity growth experience sheds light on the general phenomenon of recurring prolon...

A new scheme of personal income tax reform would eliminate the inefficiencies arising from differences in the tax treatment of investments in intangible human capital and other types of capital formation. It also would offset the exacerbation of those distortions caused by progressive taxation, without requiring abandonment of the latter principle....

The technology of “the Internet” is not static. Although its “end-to- end” architecture has made this “connection-less” communications system readily “extensible,” and highly encouraging to innovation both in hardware and software applications, there are strong pressures for engineering changes. Some of these are wanted to support novel transport s...

The three most extensively cited papers by Zvi Griliches deal with the diffusion of innovations, distributed lags and the sources of the growth of measured total factor productivity, respectively. The close economic connections between these dynamic phenomena remained largely unexplored and were at best only implicit in his published writings until...

Scientific and technological collaboration is more and more coming to be seen as critically dependent upon effective access to, and sharing of digital research data, and of the information tools that facilitate data being structured for efficient storage, search, retrieval, display and higher level analysis. A February 2003 report to the U.S. NSF D...

This monograph is concerned with the nature of the process of macroeconomic growth that has characterized the U. S. experience, and manifested itself in the changing pace and sources of the continuing rise real output per capita over the course of the past two hundred years. A key observation that emerges from the long-term quantitative economic re...

Three styles of explanation have been advanced by economists seeking to account for the so-called 'productivity paradox'. The coincidence of a persisting slowdown in the growth of measured total factor productivity (TFP) in the US, since the mid-1970's, with the wave of information technology (It) innovations, is said by some to be an illusion due...

A marked acceleration of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in U.S. manufacturing followed World War I. This development contributed substantially to the absolute and relative rise of the domestic economy's aggregate TFP residual, which is observed when the 'growth accounts' for the first quarter of the twentieth century are compared with those...

The paper develops a formal model of coalition-building (“network” formation) among research units that seek competitive funding from a supra-regional program, while also drawing support from their respective regional funding agencies. This approach enables one to ask whether there are stable (equilibrium) outcomes in the interactions among the sev...

We present an original modeling tool, which can be used to study the mechanisms by which free/libre and open source software developers’ code-writing efforts are allocated within open source projects. It is first described analytically in a discrete choice framework, and then simulated using agent-based experiments. Contributions are added sequenti...

Both the macroeconomic and the microeconomic evidence from U. S. economy’s experience over the past two centuries leads to a view of technological change (broadly conceived) as having not been “neutral” in its effects upon growth. The specific meaning of “non-neutrality” in this context is that technical and organizational innovation had effects up...

Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi Indian word that translates into English as 'life out of balance,' 'crazy life,' 'life in turmoil,' 'life disintegrating,' all meanings consistent with indicating 'a way of life which calls for another way of living.” While not wishing to suggest either that the international regime of intellectual property rights protection...

[eng] This paper explores the theoretical options and the main orientations of the � competing technologies � model of B. Arthur and P. David. Under increasing returns, competition between n technologies can lock-in in to monopoly of one of the n technologies. The model shows also that each technology has positive probability of dominating. Thus th...

According to the advocates of a "Generalized Darwinism" (GD), the three core Darwinian principles of variation, selection and retention (or inheritance) can be used as a general framework for the development of theories explaining evolutionary processes in the socio­economic domain. Even though these are originally biological terms, GD argues that...

The three-fold purpose of this Report to the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Research Councils (UK) is to: • articulate the nature and significance of the non-technological issues that will bear on the practical effectiveness of the hardware and software infrastructures that are being created to enable collaborations in e- Science...

Early contributions to the academic literature on free/libre and open source software (F/LOSS) movements have been directed primarily at identifying the motivations that account for the sustained and often intensive involvement of many people in this non-contractual and unremunerated productive activity. This issue has been particularly prominent i...

This paper analyses the propensity to withdraw European patent applications within a regional sample of Italian applicants. The procedure for obtaining a granted patent from the EPO is composed of a series of sequential and selective steps imposing additional costs to the applicants. Accordingly, we argue that early withdrawals - i.e. those occurri...

When discussing the goals and strategies for enhancing the European region's international economic competitiveness-specifically those announced at the Meeting of EU Council of Ministers in Lisbon-several are the themes that can be analyzed. For example the relationship between fundamental advances in scientific understanding and technological inno...

A new generation of information and communication infrastructures, including advanced Internet computing and Grid technologies, promises to enable more direct and shared access to more widely distributed computing resources than was previously possible. Scientific and technological collaboration, consequently, is more and more coming to be seen as...

This essay examines the economics of patronage in the production of knowledge and its influence upon the historical formation of key elements in the ethos and organizational structure of publicly funded open science. The emergence during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries of the idea and practice of “open science" was a distinctive...

all had a helpful hand in shaping this work. But, the views expressed and the defects that remain are ours. SUMMARY We present an original modeling tool that can be used to study the social mechanisms by which individual software developers' efforts are allocated within large and complex open source projects. The dynamical agent-based model is firs...

Increasing access charges and transactions costs arising from monopoly rights in data and information adversely affect the conduct of science, especially exploratory research programs. The latter are critical for the sustained growth of knowledge-driven economies, and are most efficiently pursued in the 'open science' mode. In some fields, informal...

This essay exposes the limitations of the 'logical origins' approach that has found favour among economists who seek to understand the workings of institutions in the past present. It pursues a different approach, applying functionalism in historical context to explain the emergence of the characteristic ethos and institutions of 'open science'. Th...

Contribution to the Third EPIP Workshop: “What Motivates Inventors to Invent?” Convened at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy, 2-3 April 2004

Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research: SIEPR Discussion Paper 02‐04 (July, 2003) Can ‘Open Science’ be Protected from the Evolving Regime of IPR Protections? by Paul A. David Stanford University & All Souls College, Oxford ABSTRACT Increasing access charges and transactions costs arising from monopoly rights in data and information adv...

This paper aims to develop a stochastic simulation structure capable of describing the decentralized, micro-level decisions that allocate programming resources both within and among open source/free software (OS/FS) projects, and that thereby generate an array of OS/FS system products each of which possesses particular qualitative attributes. The c...

This paper presents data gathered from a detailed study of the structure and composition of the Linux kernel developer community, as sampled through three versions of the Linux kernel. Based on previously defined methodology and tools, data is presented on the distribution of authorship across modules, the degree of collaboration between authors, a...

Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with respect to their disposable incomes. To analyse effect...

The paper develops a formal model of coalition-building ("network" formation) among research units that seek competitive funding from a supra-regional program, while also drawing support from their respective regional funding agencies. This analysis is motivated by the absence of frameworks of analysis applicable to problems of design of public R&D...

This book shows how analysis of past experiences contributes to a better understanding of present-day economic conditions; chapters offer important insights into major challenges that will occupy the attention of policy makers in the coming decades. The seventeen chapters are organised around three major themes, the first of which is the changing c...