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Peer-reviewed Publications
 

No Free Lunch? Welfare Analysis of Firms Selling Through Expert Intermediaries
with Matt Grennan, Ashley Swanson, and Aaron Chatterji 
Review of Economic Studies (forthcoming)

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Is it good or bad when firms take doctors out to lunch? In the case we study -- cholesterol-lowering statins -- it seems like it's good for consumers because it drives certain doctors to prescribe more of these drugs that they'd otherwise not use enough.


How Important is Editorial Gatekeeping? Evidence from Top Biomedical Journals
with Josh Krieger and Ariel Stern
Review of Economics and Statistics (forthcoming)
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Major biomedical journals tend to publish papers on the same topics that their editors studied, but this effect likely plays a small role in the publishing process -- increasing the churn of editors (e.g., via shorter editor tenures) wouldn't change things much.


Estimating Spillovers from Publicly Funded R&D: Evidence from the US Department of Energy
with Lauren Lanahan
American Economic Review (2022), 112(7), 2393–2423
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The spillovers from public R&D grants are large and reach far across geographic and technological space, and focusing only on firms that directly receive grants causes you to miss a lot of what's going on.


Potentially Long-lasting Effects of the Pandemic on Scientists
with Jian Gao, Yian Yin, Karim Lakhani, and Dashun Wang
Nature Communications (2021), 12, 6188
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The COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant decline in the number of "new" research projects initiated by academic researchers.


The Elasticity of Science
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (2020), 12(4), 103–134
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The adjustment costs of science -- getting scientists to study what you want them to -- are very large.


Unequal Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Scientists
with Wei Yang Tham, Yian Yin, Nina Cohodes, Jerry Thursby, Marie Thursby, Peter Schiffer, Joseph Walsh, Karim Lakhani, and Dashun Wang
Nature Human Behaviour (2020), 4, 880–883
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Scientists experienced a wide range of disruptions to their work in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the largest declines amongst those in the "bench sciences," female scientists, and researchers with young children at home.


Endogenous Productivity of Demand-induced R&D: Evidence from Pharmaceuticals
with Mark Pauly
RAND Journal of Economics (2019), 50(3), 591–614
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When people want more new drugs, firms are happy to invest in ideas that cost more. And as they run out of "low hanging fruit" while demand keeps growing, R&D costs will naturally grow.

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