Competition, Procurement and Learning-By-Doing in the Space Launch Industry

We are very grateful to seminar participants at National University of Singapore, Singapore Management University, Temple University, the University of Maryland and attendees at the 2025 Texas IO Day. We thank Brian Pierce and Thomas Hedberg of UMD’s ARLIS Center and Christopher Reynolds of UMD’s Joint Space Science Institute for useful discussions about the industry, and Shanglyu Deng, Uli Doraszelski, Brad Larsen, Mario Leccese and Huseyin Yilidirim for insightful comments on earlier drafts. The usual disclaimer applies. We received no funding for this project, and we have no relevant financial relationships to disclose. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.