Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 17

Edited by
Shane Greenstein
Josh Lerner,
and Scott Stern
The University of Chicago Press, 2017
$60 (cloth)

The 17th volume of Innovation Policy and the Economy provides an accessible forum for bringing the work of leading academic researchers to an audience of policy makers and those interested in the interaction between public policy and innovation. In the first chapter, Joel Waldfogel discusses how reduced costs of production have resulted in a "Golden Age of Television," arguing that this development has gone underappreciated. The second chapter, by Marc Rysman and Scott Schuh, discusses the prospects for innovation in payment systems, including mobile payments, faster payment systems, and digital currencies. In the third chapter, Catherine Tucker and Amalia Miller analyze the consequences of patient data becoming virtually costless to store, share, and individualize, showing how data management and privacy issues have become important considerations in health policy. The fourth chapter, by Michael Luca, examines how online marketplaces have proliferated over the past decade, evolving far beyond pioneers such as eBay and Amazon. In the fifth chapter, Timothy Bresnahan and Pai-Ling Yin characterize information and communication technologies in the workplace, which have transformed production and shifted relative labor demand toward smart managers and professionals, and workers who are skilled at contributing to and interacting with other members of organizations.