Featured Article
Innovation or Jobs? An Inconvenient Truth About Public Financing for “Innovation”
By Camilla A. Hrdy, 3 J.L. & INNOVATION 69 (2020)
Public finance—whether in the form of grants, subsidies, or tax credits—is increasingly being cast as the panacea to either a world of IP and all its foibles, or a world in which innovators have insufficient incentives to undertake risky research. The idea is that, rather than supporting innovation through the gifting of exclusive rights like patents, government can use taxpayer dollars to support research and development activities directly. This article casts doubt on the notion that public finance can ever provide a suitable alternative for incentivizing innovation. It makes this point by examining financial subsidies currently offered by U.S. state governments…
