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08 Jul 2020Working Paper Summaries

Inventing the Endless Frontier: The Effects of the World War II Research Effort on Post-War Innovation

by Daniel P. Gross and Bhaven N. Sampat

Investments made in World War II by the United States Office of Scientific Research and Development powered decades of subsequent innovation and the take-off of regional technology hubs around the country.

Author Abstract

During World War II, the U.S. government launched an unprecedented effort to mobilize science for war: a newly-established Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) entered thousands of R&D contracts with industrial and academic contractors, spending one to two orders of magnitude more than what the government was previously investing in science. In this paper, we study the long-run effects of the OSRD-supported research effort on U.S. invention. Using data on all OSRD contracts and the patents they produced, we show that these investments had large effects on the direction and location of U.S. invention and high-tech industrial employment, setting in motion agglomeration forces which shaped the technology clusters of the postwar era. Our results highlight how mission-driven federal investments in a blend of basic and applied research can foster domestic innovation and long-run technological progress.

Paper Information

Full Working Paper Text
Working Paper Publication Date: June 2020
HBS Working Paper Number: HBS Working Paper #20-126
Faculty Unit(s): Strategy

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