[Daviscenter-list] 5/15 - "Science in the Former USSR" Economics of Science and Engineering Workshop

Developing countries will need to incur significant new costs to address legal obligations associated with enhanced intellectual property rights (TRIPs). In many countries, it is too early to predict whether increased patent protection increases innovative activity. Recent economic history may provide a useful laboratory for understanding the effects of patent reform on innovative activity. A unique new data set allows examination of patenting behavior by citizens of the Soviet Union (1971-1991) and of Russia (1992-2007). I find that Soviet inventors obtained tens of thousands of patents abroad, despite prohibitions on ownership of private property in the U.S.S.R. Further, outsourcing patent protection appears to promote innovative activity in the short run but not in the long run. An important implication of these findings is that emerging markets and developing countries may increasingly need to invest in their own institutions of intellectual property protection over time rather than outsourcing them. *BIO:* Lisa D. Cook is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics and at James Madison College (International Relations) at Michigan State University. She was an honors graduate of Spelman College and a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University, where she obtained a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. She received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. She has been a post-doctoral fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard University (Kennedy School of Government), Senior Adviser on Finance and Development at the Treasury Department and Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow under the Clinton and Bush Administrations, and a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. She has also worked or completed internships at Salomon Brothers, the World Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Bank of America (formerly Citizens and Southern Bank), and the Brookings Institution (Research Assistant to Alice Rivlin). Her current teaching and research interests include economic growth and development, the economics of intellectual property rights, and financial institutions and markets. Dr. Cook is the author of a number of published articles, book chapters, and working papers. She has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Economic History Association. With fellow economist and co-author Jeffrey Sachs, she has advised the governments of Rwanda and Nigeria. She has lived in France, the United Kingdom, Senegal, and Russia; speaks French, Wolof, Russian, and Spanish; and has traveled widely in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. During the 2008-2009 academic year, Professor Cook served on the Obama Presidential Transition Team and is an Innovation Policy and the Economy Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

*ABSTRACT: *With the economic collapse that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 came dramatic drops in funding for science and the wages of scientists. This, along with the sudden mobility that followed the end of the USSR, led many scientists to emigrate to the United States, Israel or Europe to continue their careers. Others remained at home and sought opportunities to continue their research, despite the economic instability. Some, meanwhile, left science completely. In this project, I study the migration decisions and productivity of leading Soviet scientists after the end of the USSR. I draw upon information from programs from the International Science Foundation (ISF), a large-scale grant-giving institution created by George Soros to support scientists from the former USSR beginning in 1993. Using data on publications, citations, and affiliation collected through the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) and the Science Citation Index (SCI), I present initial evidence on the impact of grants on scientists' outcomes. *BIO: *Ina Ganguli is a doctoral candidate in Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Ina's research areas are labor economics, international development and program evaluation, with a focus on immigration, education, innovation, and gender issues. Ina holds a B.A. in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences from Northwestern University, and a Master of Public Policy from the University of Michigan.