The existence of geographically mediated "spillovers" from university research to commercial innovation is explored using state-level time-series data on corporate patents, corporate R&D, and university research. A significant effect of university research on corporate patents is found, particularly in the areas of Drugs and Medical Technology, and Electronics, Optics, and Nuclear Technology. In addition, university research appears to have an indirect effect on local innovation by inducing industrial R&D spending.

This paper quantifies the effects on the productivity of firms' R & D of exogenous variations in the state of technology (technological opportunity) and of the R & D of other firms (spillovers of R & D). The R & D productivity is increased by the R & D of "technological neighbors," though neighbors' R & D lowers the profits and market value of low-R&D-intensity firms. Firms are shown to adjust the technological composition of their R & D in response to technological opportunity.

By affecting relative economic returns, public infrastructure investments can induce major changes in private land use. We find that 30 percent of forested wetland depletion in the Mississippi Valley has resulted from private decisions induced by federal flood-control projects, despite explicit federal policy to preserve wetlands. Our model aggregates individual land-use decisions using a parametric distribution of unobserved land quality; dynamic simulations are used to quantify the impacts on wetlands of federal projects and other factors.

The effects of technological opportunity, market demand and RD with respect to productivity growth, it is not possible to distinguish demand and technological opportunity effects, but spillovers are important.

The existence of geographically mediated "spillovers" from university research to commercial innovation is explored using state-level time-series data on corporate patents, corporate R&D, and university research. A significant effect of university research on corporate patents is found, particularly in the areas of drugs and medical technology, and electronics, optics, and nuclear technology. In addition, university research appears to have an indirect effect on local innovation by inducing industrial R&D spending.

This survey assesses evidence on the linkage between environmental regulation and competitiveness, and finds little support for the conventional wisdom that environmental regulations have large adverse effects on competitiveness. Studies examining the effects of environmental regulations on net exports, overall trade flows, and plant-location decisions have produced estimates that are small, statistically insignificant, or not robust. We also find no systematic evidence supporting the revisionist hypothesis that environmental regulations stimulate innovation and improved competitiveness. Overall, the evidence suggests that the truth regarding the relationship between environmental protection and international competitiveness lies in between the extremes of the current debate.

The problem of global climate change presents overwhelming factual, analytical, and normative challenges. Nordhaus surveys this terrain bravely and mostly successfully. He explains the scientific/economic consensus that the planet is warming, that people are responsible, that the consequences are bad, and that immediate action is benefit/ cost justified. He also discusses the efficient policy response, and the challenges of achieving coordinated global action. His approach is mostly that of standard neoclassical economics, and some of the limitations of that paradigm in this context are not addressed. But overall, The Climate Casino provides an excellent self-contained introduction to the subject.

In a 1991 essay in Scientific American, Michael Porter suggested that environmental regulation may have a positive effect on the performance of domestic firms relative to their foreign competitors by stimulating domestic innovation. We examine the stylized facts regarding environmental expenditures and innovation in a panel of manufacturing industries. We find that lagged environmental compliance expenditures have a significant positive effect on R&D expenditures when we control for unobserved industry-specific effects. We find little evidence, however, that industries' inventive output (as measured by successful patent applications) is related to compliance costs.

Knowledge Spillovers and Patent Citations: Evidence from a Survey of Inventors by Adam B. Jaffe, Manuel Trajtenberg and Michael S. Fogarty. Published in volume 90, issue 2, pages 215-218 of American Economic Review, May 2000

This paper explores the recent explosion in university patenting as a source of insight into the changing relationship between the university and the private sector. Before the mid-1980s, university patents were more highly cited, and were cited by more diverse patents, than a random sample of all patents. More recently several significant shifts in university patenting behavior have led to the disappearance of this difference. Thus our results suggest that between 1965 and 1988 the rate of increase of important patents from universities was much less than their overall rate of increase of patenting.