How institutional incentives and constraints affect the progress of science

Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation

Volumn 26, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 231-239

  Diamond, Arthur M ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Constraints; Incentives; Institutions; Policy; Progress; Values

Indexed keywords

INCENTIVE; INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK; TECHNOLOGY POLICY;

EID: 49949110580     PISSN: 08109028     EISSN: 14701030     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/08109020802270190     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. The original version of this paper was prepared for an NSF-sponsored conference on 'The Need for a New Economics of Science'. I received useful comments from Steve Durlauf. Deirdre McCloskey graciously gave permission to reproduce her cats graph. A later version of the paper was presented to a meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science.
2. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1976, p. 124; first edition was published in 1759.
3. See: A. Rupert Hall, Philosophers at War: The Quarrel Between Newton and Leibniz, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980, passim
4. Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980, pp. 698-780.
5. It has even been suggested that some of Newton's behavior later in life may have been due to his having ingested mercury from his alchemical experiments-one more example of constraints mattering?
6. Warren O. Hagstrom, The Scientific Community, Basic Books, Inc., New York, 1965
7. Michael T. Ghiselin, 'The economics of scientific discovery', in Gerard Radnitzky and Peter Bernholz (eds), Economic Imperialism: The Economic Approach Applied Outside the Field of Economics, Paragon House Publishers, New York, 1987, pp. 271-82
8. Gordon Tullock, The Organization of Inquiry, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1966, pp. 34-6.
9. David M. Levy, 'The market for fame and fortune', History of Political Economy, 20, 4, Winter 1988, pp. 615-25.
10. For example, James D. Watson, The Double Helix, Signet Books, New York, 1968.
11. George Gaylord Simpson, Simple Curiosity, edited by Léo F. Laporte, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987, p. 47.
12. Friedrich A. Hayek, 'The use of knowledge in society', American Economic Review, 35, 4, September 1945, pp. 519-30 at p. 527. Reprinted in Individualism and Economic Order, Henry Regnery Co., Chicago, 1972.
13. Cf. David H. Guston, 'Principal-agent theory and the structure of science policy', Science and Public Policy, 23, 4, August 1996, pp. 229-40.
14. David L. Hull, Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science, Science & Its Conceptual Foundations, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1988.
15. Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1993.
16. Arthur M. Diamond, Jr, 'Economic explanations of the behaviour of universities and scholars', Journal of Economic Studies, 20, 4/5, 1994, pp. 107-33.
17. Martin J. S. Rudwick, The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge among Gentlemanly Specialists, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1985.
18. George J. Stigler, Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist, Basic Books, Inc., New York, 1988, pp. 85-6.
19. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle, Bantam Books, Inc., New York, 1969.
20. Arthur M. Diamond, Jr, 'Science as a rational enterprise', Theory and Decision, 24, 1988b, pp. 147-67.
21. See, e.g., Paula E. Stephan and Sharon G. Levin, Striking the Mother Lode in Science: The Importance of Age, Place, and Time, Oxford University Press, New York, 1992.
22. Although the jury is still out on chaos theory, some frontier research by William Brock indicates that the theory may have limited applicability to economic processes. The summary of Brock's (1991a) FMA presentation from the program was: 'This session reviews methods of testing for chaos and other "complex" nonlinearity in asset returns data such as stocks and exchange rates. Evidence of chaos is poor, but statistical techniques have turned out to be useful in detecting and suggesting other interesting nonlinearities and nonstationarities'. In print (1991b) at about the same time, he wrote: 'Chaotic dynamics are a very special type of nonlinearity ... Perhaps this is why there is considerable controversy about the relevance of The findings of chaotic dynamics for economic-or even for the natural sciences... Define the dynamical process to be chaotic if it displays sensitive dependence on initial conditions ... William A. Brock, 'Causality, chaos, explanation and prediction in economics and finance', in J. L. Casti and A. Karlqvist (eds), Beyond Belief: Randomness, Prediction and Explanation in Science, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Fla, 1991b, pp. 230-79. The bulk of evidence suggests that low-dimensional (one to three) deterministic chaos is not likely in aggregated economic data (...) although there is still some controversy on the matter' (pp. 257-8).
23. Steven Durlauf, who is associated with the Santa Fe Institute, has remarked in conversation (15 March 1997) that chaos theory is no longer being actively developed and applied by economists at the Institute. (The FMA Brock paper was: William A. Brock, 'Chaos and non-linear dynamics in the stock market', presented at the Chicago meetings of the Financial Management Association, 12 October 1991a.)
24. Paul David, 'Clio and the economics of QWERTY', American Economic Review, 75, 2, May 1985, pp. 332-7.
25. For an alternative account from that presented by Paul David, see: S. J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis, 'The fable of the keys', Journal of Law and Economics, 33, 1, April 1990, pp. 1-25.
26. Deirdra McCloskey, The Applied Theory of Price, Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 1982, p. 164.
27. Henderson suggests that the introduction of new labor-saving instruments reduced the costs of the Key Observatory sufficiently to reverse Herschel's efforts to end British Association support for the Kew. James Henderson, 'The British ass is a golden ass: Funding Victorian scientific research', abstract of paper presented at the Conference on the Need for a New Economics of Science, 1997.
28. Arthur M. Diamond, Jr, 'The polywater episode and the appraisal of theories', in A. Donovan, L. Laudan and R. Laudan (eds), Scrutinizing Science: Empirical Studies of Scientific Change, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Holland, 1988a, pp. 181-98.
29. William N. Butos and Roger Koppl, 'Science as a spontaneous order: An essay in the economics of science', in Hans S. Jensen, Lykke M. Richter and Morten T. Vendelø (eds), The Evolution of Scientific Knowledge Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2003, p. 27.
30. Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, The Macmillan Co., New York, 1959.
31. The episode is a standard 'textbook' case of multiple discovery in economics. Cf., e.g. Harry Landreth and David C. Colander, History of Economic Thought, 3rd edition, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1994, pp. 217-8.
32. Mark Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect, 4th edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1985.
33. Ibid, p. 304.
34. Diana Crane, Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientific Communities, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1972.