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VoxEU Video
Paolo Surico (London Business School & CEPR) joins Tim Phillips to discuss his ambitious new study tracing the macroeconomic impact of publicly funded innovation across the post-war United States.
Drawing on granular patent data, Surico and his co-authors find that NIH and NSF — not the Pentagon — are the agencies most closely associated with productivity-boosting breakthroughs. The key, he argues, isn’t whether innovation is military, medical, or educational in origin. It’s whether it is rooted in basic research.
The conversation covers:
Why 2% of patents can drive 20% of productivity growth
The Vannevar Bush blueprint and its lasting influence
Why public R&D “crowds in” private investment rather than displacing it
Why government-backed startups outperform both incumbents and privately funded startups
The risks of the US science funding cuts of 2025
What Europe can learn — and why the Draghi report could be its Vannevar Bush moment
