Featured paper · 2025
Tapping into Talent: Coupling Education and Innovation Policies
Why a country cannot make great inventors without making the right kind of education investment. The paper estimates how much of the inventor distribution is missing because of underinvestment in the long tail of basic schooling, and what it costs at the frontier.
Ufuk Akcigit, Jeremy G. Pearce, Marta Prato. Review of Economic Studies, 2025.
The policy line
R&D subsidies aimed at the top of the talent distribution leave most of the prize on the table. The marginal inventor lives in the tail, and the tail is built in primary school.
Summary
Why a country cannot make great inventors without making the right kind of education investment. The paper estimates how much of the inventor distribution is missing because of underinvestment in the long tail of basic schooling, and what it costs at the frontier.
The Academy uses this paper as a primary text across its five pillars. The full text is available at the publisher.
