IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/35966.html

Public R&D and the Automation of Manufacturing: Evidence from the Space Race

Author

Listed:
  • Apoorva Babbar
  • Shawn Kantor
  • Alexander Whalley
  • Jingyuan Zeng

Abstract

This paper examines how public research and development shaped the direction of technological change during the Cold War–era Space Race and its consequences for US manufacturing. While prior research has documented the effects of public R&D on innovation and economic growth, less is known about whether mission-oriented public investment directed innovation toward automation and how this affected labor markets. We exploit variation in exposure to NASA's Space Race investments across industries and locations to estimate the effects of public R&D on innovation and manufacturing outcomes from 1947 to 1992. Combining newly developed measures of automation in full-text patent data with historical evidence on government involvement in patenting, we show that NASA-sponsored patents are systematically more automation-intensive than non-NASA patents within the same technological classes. Industries and locations more exposed to Space Race activity experienced persistent declines in labor share, consistent with the diffusion of labor-saving technologies developed for space applications. In contrast, we find little evidence of systematic changes in skill composition. These findings show that mission-oriented public R&D can shape the direction of technological change and have lasting distributional consequences.

Suggested Citation

  • Apoorva Babbar & Shawn Kantor & Alexander Whalley & Jingyuan Zeng, 2026. "Public R&D and the Automation of Manufacturing: Evidence from the Space Race," NBER Working Papers 35966, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35966
    Note: DAE PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w35966.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

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H59 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Other
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • N62 - Economic History - - Manufacturing and Construction - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
    • N72 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes

    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:35966. 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.