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Basic scientific research and technological development have had an
enormous impact on innovation, economic growth, and social
well-being. Yet science policy debates have long been dominated by
advocates for particular scientific fields or missions. In the
absence of a deeper understanding of the changing framework in
which innovation occurs, policymakers cannot predict how best to
make and manage investments to exploit our most promising and
important opportunities.
Since 2005, a science of science policy has developed rapidly in
response to policymakers' increased demands for better tools and
the social sciences' capacity to provide them. "The Science of
Science Policy: A Handbook" brings together some of the best and
brightest minds working in science policy to explore the
foundations of an evidence-based platform for the field.
The contributions in this book provide an overview of the current
state of the science of science policy from three angles:
theoretical, empirical, and policy in practice. They offer
perspectives from the broader social science, behavioral science,
and policy communities on the fascinating challenges and prospects
in this evolving arena. Drawing on domestic and international
experiences, the text delivers insights about the critical
questions that create a demand for a science of science policy.
This book consists of a selected subset of papers presented at the
International Symposium of Linked Employer-Employee Data, held in
Washington DC, in May 1998 - to address the creation and analysis
of such matched data in an environment that safeguards respondent
confidentiality. The conference brought together a wide range of
social scientists and statisticians from more than 20 countries.
Three broad themes are highlighted:
(1) The analysis of linked employer-employee data.
The basic finding of this and the next section is that the firm
matters a good deal in explaining the differences in earnings,
productivity, and work experiences of individual workers. Linked
data allow the researcher to disentangle the firm effects from the
worker effects.
(2) Econometric issues involved with the analysis of such
data.
Creating and analyzing employer-employee matched data sets presents
a number of new econometric problems that are not present in
standard micro-data sets containing just workers or just employers.
However, these data also offer us a unique opportunity to examine
the effects of some of the econometric problems involved in using
the other data sources. The chapters in this section address both
of these issues. The first two chapters examine new econometric
issues involved in the creation and use of matched data sets, while
the second two chapters use matched data to examine possible
problems with cross-sectional or panel data on workers. The results
from each of these chapters will be valuable to all empirical
researchers, regardless of whether they are using employer-employee
matched data or more standard cross-sectional or panel data
sets.
(3) Ongoing effortsaimed at creating large-scale linked
employer-employee data.
The last section of this book describes four recent efforts at
creating linked employer-employee data through surveys of firms and
individuals. The first two chapters describe an "employers first"
methodology of creating linked employer-employee data, and the last
two chapters describe an "employees first" methodology. The two
"employees first" surveys described here are, as far as known, the
only two large-scale surveys in production that follow this design.
Each of the four chapters in this section describes details about
the design and field operation of the survey that will be
indispensable to others who might want to create or analyze linked
employer-employee survey data.
The 23 chapters in this book provide a glimpse into the future of
labor economics and industrial organization. It can be said that
labor economics and public policy around the world has been
dominated over the past several decades by quantitative analyses
based upon public-use US micro-data. In the future, it is very
likely that economics and social policy in the United States and
elsewhere will depend on quantitative analysis based on linked
employer-employee micro-data currently residing in all continents
of the world.
The scientific advances that underpin economic growth and human
health would not be possible without research investments. Yet
demonstrating the impact of research programs is a challenge,
especially in areas that span disciplines, industrial sectors, and
encompass both public and private sector activity. All areas of
research are under pressure to demonstrate benefits from federal
funding of research. This exciting and innovative study
demonstrates new methods and tools to trace the impact of federal
research funding on the structure of research, and the subsequent
economic activities of funded researchers. The case study is food
safety research, which is critical to avoiding outbreaks of
disease. The authors make use of an extraordinary new data
infrastructure and apply new techniques in text analysis. Focusing
on the impact of US federal food safety research, this book
develops vital data-intensive methodologies that have a real world
application to many other scientific fields.
Moving Up or Moving On, Fredrik Andersson, Harry Holzer, and Julia
Lane examine the characteristics of both employees and employers
that lead to positive outcomes for workers. Using new Census data,
Moving Up or Moving On follows a group of low earners over a
nine-year period to analyze the behaviors and characteristics of
individuals and employers that lead workers to successful career
outcomes. The authors find that, in general, workers who moved on
to different employers fared better than those who tried to move up
within the same firm. While changing employers meant losing
valuable job tenure and spending more time out of work than those
who stayed put, workers who left their jobs in search of better
opportunity elsewhere ended up with significantly higher earnings
in the long term in large part because they were able to find
employers that paid better wages and offered more possibilities for
promotion. Yet moving on to better jobs is difficult for many of
the working poor because they lack access to good-paying firms.
Andersson, Holzer, and Lane demonstrate that low-wage workers tend
to live far from good paying employers, making an improved
transportation infrastructure a vital component of any public
policy to improve job prospects for the poor. Labor market
intermediaries can also help improve access to good employers. The
authors find that one such intermediary, temporary help agencies,
improved long-term outcomes for low-wage earners by giving them
exposure to better-paying firms and therefore the opportunity to
obtain better jobs. Taken together, these findings suggest that
public policy can best serve the working poor by expanding their
access to good employers, assisting them with job training and
placement, and helping them to prepare for careers that combine
both mobility and job retention strategies. Moving Up or Moving On
offers a compelling argument about how low-wage workers can achieve
upward mobility, and how public policy can facilitate the process.
Clearly written and based on an abundance of new data, this book
provides concrete, practical answers to the large questions
surrounding the low-wage labor market."
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