Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find? / Nicholas Bloom, Charles I. Jones, John Van Reenen, Michael Webb.

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Bloom, Nicholas

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Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w23782.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2017.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

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Abstract: In many growth models, economic growth arises from people creating ideas, and the long-run growth rate is the product of two terms: the effective number of researchers and their research productivity. We present a wide range of evidence from various industries, products, and firms showing that research effort is rising substantially while research productivity is declining sharply. A good example is Moore's Law. The number of researchers required today to achieve the famous doubling every two years of the density of computer chips is more than 18 times larger than the number required in the early 1970s. Across a broad range of case studies at various levels of (dis)aggregation, we find that ideas -- and in particular the exponential growth they imply -- are getting harder and harder to find. Exponential growth results from the large increases in research effort that offset its declining productivity.

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Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w23782 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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September 2017.

In many growth models, economic growth arises from people creating ideas, and the long-run growth rate is the product of two terms: the effective number of researchers and their research productivity. We present a wide range of evidence from various industries, products, and firms showing that research effort is rising substantially while research productivity is declining sharply. A good example is Moore's Law. The number of researchers required today to achieve the famous doubling every two years of the density of computer chips is more than 18 times larger than the number required in the early 1970s. Across a broad range of case studies at various levels of (dis)aggregation, we find that ideas -- and in particular the exponential growth they imply -- are getting harder and harder to find. Exponential growth results from the large increases in research effort that offset its declining productivity.