Public Goods Public Gains

"Public support of R&D has played a vital role in U.S economic growth but, at the same time, there is always the danger of wasting money by supporting bad projects. Link and Scott are two of the premier economists in the field, and in their superb book they lay out the approach needed to decide if and how pubic support should be provided. Globally, there is increasing public support for R&D and U.S. should respond to the competitive pressure, but only by doing it right. Link and Scott tell us how." - Martin Neil Baily,

"Publicly funded R&D is generally regarded to be an important source f economic growth. Unfortunately, it has always been difficult to precisely estimate the social returns to these investments, i.e., the benefits that accrue to society from publicly funded innovation. in this path braking book, the authors identify and make use of sophisticate economic and non economic methods to carefully evaluate the social returns to publicly funded R&D. Given the growing importance of innovation in the global economy, the usefulness of this timely and important book to academic and policymakers will not diminish over time." - Donald S. SIegel.