Opening up Military Innovation: Causal Effects of Reforms to U.S. Defense Research

We thank Chris Benson, David O’Brien, Susan Celis, Charles Chimento, Gregory Coleman, Allen Franke, Steve Lauver, Charles Perla, David Shahady, Molly Walsh, Will Roper and many others at the U.S. Air Force who have helped make this research possible. We also thank Jon Asker and four anonymous referees for extensive comments as well as Pierre Azoulay, Liat Belinson, Adam Jaffe, Saul Lach, Josh Lerner, Danielle Li, Ramana Nanda, Trang Nguyen, Jacquelyn Pless, Claudia Steinwender, Noam Yuchtman, Tom Wollman and seminar participants at the AEA, Bocconi, Erasmus, European Commission, INSEAD, LSE, MIT, Northwestern, Nova, NYU, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Tsinghua, U.S. Census Bureau, USI Lugano, Utah, WEFI and WFA. Howell served as an unpaid Special Government Employee of the U.S. Department of Defense to perform this research, and would like to thank the Kauffman Foundation for financial support. Van Reenen would like to thank the ESRC for financial support through POID. Edited by John Asker. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Air Force or the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• April 21, 2021
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