One of the most influential economics of innovation papers from the last decade is “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find” by Bloom, Jones, Van Reenen, and Webb, ultimately published in 2020 but in earlier draft circulation for years. While the paper is ostensibly concerned with testing a prediction of some economic growth models, it’s broader fame is attributable to it’s documentation of a striking fact: across varied domains, the R&D efforts necessary to eke out technological improvement keep getting higher. Let’s take a look at their evidence, as well as some complementary evidence from other papers.

This podcast is a read through of the (initial version of the) article Innovation (mostly) gets harder, published on New Things Under the Sun.

Articles mentioned:
Bloom, Nicholas, Charles I. Jones, John Van Reenen, and Michael Webb. 2020. Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find? American Economics Review 110(4): 1104-1144. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20180338

Besiroglu, Tamay. 2020. Are models getting harder to find? Masters Thesis, University of Cambridge. https://www.tamaybesiroglu.com/projects

Boeing, Philipp, and Paul Hünermund. 2020. A global decline in research productivity? Evidence from China and Germany. Economics Letters 197: 109646. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2020.109646

Miyagawa, Tsutomu and Ishikawa Takayuki. 2019. On the Decline of R&D Efficiency. Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry discussion paper 19052. https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/19052.html