We estimate the long-term effect of public R&D on growth in manufacturing by analyzing new data from the Cold War era Space Race. We develop a novel empirical strategy that leverages US-Soviet rivalry in space technology to isolate windfall R&D spending. Our results demonstrate that public R&D...

The issue of whether government capital is productive has received a great deal of attention recently, yet empirical analyses of public capital productivity have generally been limited to the official capital stock estimates available in a small sample of countries. Alternatively, many...

The issue of whether government capital is productive has received a great deal of attention recently, yet empirical analyses of public capital productivity have generally been limited to the official capital stock estimates available in a small sample of countries. Alternatively, many...

Since 1980, US wage growth has been fastest in large cities. Empirically, we show that most of this urban-biased growth reflects wage growth at large Business Services firms, which are also the most intensive users of information and communications technology (ICT) capital in the US economy. We...