Rigorous nonpartisan research on the effects of economic forces and public policy on entrepreneurship and innovation. Entrepreneurship and innovation are widely recognized as drivers of economic dynamics and long-term prosperity. This series communicates key findings about the implications of entrepreneurial and innovative activity across the economy. In the first paper, Joseph Barberio, Jacob Becraft, Zied Ben Chaouch, Dimitris Bertsimas, Tasuku Kitada, Michael Li, Andrew Lo, Kevin Shi, and Qingyang Xu explore pharmaceutical firms’ weak incentives to develop vaccines against prospective diseases—due to high investment risks, low expected returns, and the rarity of pandemics— and consider a portfolio approach to financing vaccine research. Next, Daniel Hemel and Lisa Larrimore Ouellette describe a “trilemma� between quality, price, and access that appears after a generic pharmaceuticals patent expires, and show that it is difficult in a regulatory context to achieve distinct goals around price, access, and quality simultaneously. In the third paper, Silvia Dalla Fontana and Ramana Nanda examine the role of patents in the transition to a carbon-free world. They find relative to other technological areas, “Net Zero patents� are close to the scientific frontier, but due to difficulties of commercializing inventions, the share of such patents that are venture-backed has been increasingly directed to areas outside clean tech and other “deep� technologies. Jacquelyn Pless examines the effects of divestment from firms in “dirty� industries on innovation to combat climate change, or “green innovation.� She finds that compared with divesting, investing in firms and engaging with green corporate governance practices may induce more green innovation. Next, Robert Fairlie and David Robinson find that Black-owned innovative-intensive new businesses start smaller than their peers and do not converge in size over time. Differential access to bank financing is a major factor. Also “soft information,� which can help new businesses without established track records, can increase barriers for black founders and limit entrepreneurial pathways to prosperity. Finally, Jonathan Gruber, Simon Johnson, and Enrico Moretti consider the regional concentration of innovative activity in the United States. They find that while the concentration of activity has net advantages today, understanding the long-term benefits of more diffuse innovation clusters —including equity, industrial diversification, and talent development—is important.  

Using the latest empirical and conceptual research for readers in economics, business, and policy, this volume surveys the key components of innovation policy and the social returns to innovation investment. In advanced economies like the United States, innovation has long been recognized as a central force for increasing economic prosperity and human welfare. Today, the US government promotes innovation through various mechanisms, including tax credits for private-sector research, grant support for basic and applied research, and institutions like the Small Business Innovation Research Program of the National Science Foundation. Drawing on the latest empirical and conceptual research, Innovation and Public Policy surveys the key components of innovation policy and the social returns to innovation investment. It examines mechanisms that can advance the pace of invention and innovative activity, including expanding the research workforce through schooling and immigration policy and funding basic research. It also considers scientific grant systems for funding basic research, including those at institutions like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and investigates the role of entrepreneurship policy and of other institutions that promote an environment conducive to scientific breakthroughs.

In the run-up to the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower faced a series of seemingly insurmountable dilemmas. Outnumbered and desperate for any advantage to make their way past the well-defended beaches and into France, the Allies had reached out to French guerillas and partisans to help secure their aims-but transforming the highly independent resistance groups into a governable body and fighting force was a formidable task. To make matters more difficult, President Roosevelt refused to give full Allied support to Charles de Gaulle and his Free French government, and would not supply the timing, location, and other key details of Operation Overlord. It was into this storm of political mistrust and military confusion that Eisenhower sent the Jedburghs. Eisenhower's Guerillas tells the story of the reconnaissance and intelligence teams of young Special Forces, called Jedburghs, who worked behind enemy lines to strengthen the Allies' position in Northern France. Their task of organizing and training the French operatives, already monumental, was made more difficult by the fact that France's war aims were profoundly different from those of America and Britain, who regarded France as merely a military objective on the way to defeating Germany. Ben Jones describes how Eisenhower learned how to exploit this political turmoil to his advantage, and explores how the Allied Jedburgh teams still managed to coordinate French guerrilla operations within the overall plans for the country's liberation. Underscoring the critical and often overlooked part that irregular warfare played in Allied operations on the Continent, Jones delivers a riveting story of the battle for France and the political complexities that threatened to undermine the operation from within.