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."