IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/31471.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Moonshot: Public R&D and Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Shawn Kantor
  • Alexander T. Whalley

Abstract

We estimate the long-term effect of public R&D on growth in manufacturing by analyzing new data from the Cold War era Space Race. We develop a novel empirical strategy that leverages US-Soviet rivalry in space technology to isolate windfall R&D spending. Our results demonstrate that public R&D conducted by NASA contractors increased manufacturing value added, employment, and capital accumulation in space related sectors. While migration responses were important, they were not sufficient to generate a wedge between local and national effects. The iconic Moonshot R&D program had only modest economic effects for both the local and national space-related sectors.

Suggested Citation

  • Shawn Kantor & Alexander T. Whalley, 2023. "Moonshot: Public R&D and Growth," NBER Working Papers 31471, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31471
    Note: DAE PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w31471.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Magnus Henrekson & Christian Sandström & Mikael Stenkula, 2024. "Learning from Overrated Mission-Oriented Innovation Policies: Seven Takeaways," International Studies in Entrepreneurship, in: Magnus Henrekson & Christian Sandström & Mikael Stenkula (ed.), Moonshots and the New Industrial Policy, pages 235-255, Springer.
    2. Magnus Henrekson & Christian Sandström & Mikael Stenkula, 2024. "Moonshots and the New Industrial Policy: Questioning the Mission Economy," International Studies in Entrepreneurship, in: Magnus Henrekson & Christian Sandström & Mikael Stenkula (ed.), Moonshots and the New Industrial Policy, pages 3-28, Springer.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H54 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Infrastructures
    • N12 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
    • N72 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31471. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.