In order to measure the effect of tax credits on private R&D investment, researchers confront the difficult problem of finding an exogenous measure of tax policy that exhibits sufficient variation to support robust identification. This paper takes a new approach based on exploiting differences in the average capital-labor ratio of R&D investment across industries and variation in the tax treatment of different expenditure types across countries and over time. The estimated short-run elasticity is 0.50 which is somewhat more than double previous estimates derived from cross-country analysis.

We commonly think of information as a means to an end. However, a growing theoretical and experimental literature suggests that information may directly enter the agent's utility function. This can create an incentive to avoid information, even when it is useful, free, and independent of strategic considerations. We review research documenting the occurrence of information avoidance, as well as theoretical and empirical research on reasons why people avoid information, drawing from economics, psychology, and other disciplines. The review concludes with a discussion of some of the diverse (and often costly) individual and societal consequences of information avoidance.