Interesting Science, Technology, and Innovation Research Resources

So "skilled labor" is a pretty firm part of my fluctuating list of research interests now, and I've been collecting a bunch of research resources - mostly data - that I'd like to use one day for some work on it. Some is on the high skill labor market, some on innovation in general (patents, R&D spending, etc.)

1. SESTAT is a collection of datasets maintained by the National Science Foundation, and I believe the surveys themselves are done by Mathematica. SESTAT focuses on college graduates in science, technology, engineering, and math fields (STEM). The most interesting dataset in SESTAT to me is the survey of recent college graduates. This survey has detailed employment information on recent STEM graduates - including job search variables and information on how much they use what they learned in school on the job. I could think of some great "human capital utilization" variables that could be constructed from this that would be comparable to the "capital utilization" data collected on manufacturing plants by the federal reserve banks. There is also a survey of all college graduates that surveys a sample drawn from the decennial census. The advantage of this data is that it provides a cross section of the skilled laborforce. The disadvantage is that since these aren't recent graduates it doesn't give a good picture of recent changes to skilled labor supply, or what to expect in the future.

2. NSF provides lots of other data as well - the most interesting to me being a long time-series on R&D funding by source. It would be interesting to track how federal vs. state R&D funding has changed over time, and where they've been spending it.

3. Just yesterday I discovered the National Bureau of Economic Research's (NBER's) Science and Engineering Workforce Project. It's just a general forum and resource for relevant research - the usual suspects are here: George Borjas, Richard Freeman, etc. It also has a link to an intriguing project called the “Nanobank". This is how the Nanobank describes it's work:

This project uses econometric methods to estimate the impact of nanoscale science and technology (nano S&T) research, and associated interdisciplinary research, directly on firms' entry and success and hence on U.S. economic growth, standard of living, and competitiveness. The research team also performs scientometric and institutional analyses of diffusion and networks in nano S&T and converging fields, and the reciprocal effects of institutions on nano S&T and of academic scientists' involvement in commercialization on their scientific productivity and teaching.

It also has some beta test data available for download on patents, patent citations, NSF grants, and NIH grants. I assume it is all nano-specific patents and grants here. The patent data interest me most. Another NBER source for patent data is Hall, Jaffe, and Tratjenberg's (2001) file. It looks like these patents are from 1963 to 1999 - roughly 3 million of them, with data on 16 million citations. I get the impression these are only specific industries, though - much like the nano-data. That's not a major constraint for me with the "innovation diffusion" modeling I have in mind, but if you need more than that you can always go to the Patent Office website. It's REALLY obnoxious to get data from here - you have to do it a page at a time so extracting millions of patents right from the website is not an option - but you do have access to information on every single patent ever issued since the beginning of the republic... that's pretty freaking cool.

4. The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), produced by the National Center for Education Statistics in the Department of Education has detailed graduate data for every postsecondary institution in the country - including graduations by field, race, and gender. It also has lots of finance information at the school level, although unfortunately not at the degree program level (i.e. - you can track federal grants going to the school, but not federal grants going to the school's physics department). I used this data in a report by Hal Salzman on the STEM workforce , but I think there is a LOT more that could have been done with it. I still need to read the final product, but I think I would take issue with some of the intepretations that Hal applied (more related to the labor demand side of the skilled labor market, which I didn't not help him with or even read yet - rather than the labor supply side which I'm more familiar with).

More resources to come, potentially... maybe I should put up some international resources for potential research on comparing the U.S. to other countries.

George Will on High-Skilled Immigration

This morning, George Will wrote about high-skilled immigrants, and advocated increasing the number of H1-B visas that these workers use to enter the U.S. I'm very torn on this issue. On the one hand, I can't reasonably oppose free markets and open borders. The logic behind these policies is absolutely unimpeachable, in my mind. However, that doesn't mean there aren't extenuating circumstances, market failures, and opportunities for government to pursue a "sub-optimal solution" that satisfies other goals.


One thing that Will does make a good point on is the irony that we throw the doors wide open for foreign students to study in the U.S., and then errect barriers to coming here to work. These foreign students take up as much as two-thirds of the slots in prestigious science and technology graduate programs in the U.S., and are then forced to go back to their home countries, or to Europe for employment. Essentially that means that we are subsidizing the economic growth and human capital stock of our competitors, and that is ridiculous. We need to open the doors to our universities and our corporations in a coordinated way - if we only let students in, but not workers, we are shooting ourselves in the foot.


However, there is a very real question about whether a skills shortage even exists in the U.S., an issue which Lou Dobbs addresses with his usual gusto. If this research is correct and skills shortages don't really drag down the U.S. economy, there is no reason to get apoplectic about the availability of H1-B visas. In fact, strong evidence against the existence of real skill shortages may even force us to reconsider further cuts in H1-B visas, although I'm not necessarily convinced that's a wise move right now. I'm going to be exploring this issue further in a paper I'll present at the 2008 Southern Economic Association conference, and I may blog on this research in the future.


Currently I'm an agnostic on this issue, but Will raises interesting points. It's also great that he considers student visas and H1-B visas together - they do need to be understood as two sides of the same coin. Ultimately, I'd like us to be able to have a very liberal student visa and H1-B visa policy - but I don't think we should move there until we find a way to get American companies to hire American graduates in these high-skill fields. As the research summarized by Lou Dobbs suggests, we seem to have a surplus of American graduates... who is hiring them???


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A second note that my more philosophically inclined readers may be interested in:


I was struck by one line in the Will article about modernity. Speaking of computer chips, he wrote: "modernity means the multiplication of dependencies on things utterly mysterious to those who are dependent"


An interesting thought. But that leads me to ask... how is that any different from pre-modern dependencies on various superstitions and shibolleths?

The Militarization of Space

Interesting article from the Washington Times on the militarization of space. I'm baffled by people who oppose missle defense and other space militarization efforts. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending the space will not become militarized won't make it so. And on the subject of missle defense especially - since when does protecting oneself get construed as an aggressive action. If military engineers think it's not a technically feasible program right now, that's one thing - I can understand holding off for those reasons. But if it is technically feasible, what the hell are we waiting for?

On the issue of space militarization more broadly, the world certainly isn't waiting for us. It would be suicide to sit on the sidelines here. I'm honestly a little disappointed in the Obama campaign's position, as stated in this article. Obama seems so rational and pragmatic in his approach to Iraq and terrorism - I'm not sure what the disconnect is on space. Granted, Obama will probably move forward on this regardless of what he says on the campaign trail. The question is - how central will it be to his defense policy?

I'm all for demilitarization, cutting nuclear arsenals, etc. We need to come back from the brink of mutually assured destruction, and we need to cultivate diplomatic relations that will obviate the need for war. But that doesn't mean we leave new frontiers undefended or leave the back door wide open at a time when aggressive powers (::cough::CHINA::cough::) are on the rise.

You also need to keep in mind the potential threat of near earth objects. I would rather have a Pentagon that is very comfortable operating in space when these things come whizzing by the Earth, rather than a Pentagon that decided to sit this one out.

As George Washington said: "Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession"... if only that worked for you in western Pennsylvania, George... nevertheless - good advice