The Economics of Scientific Knowledge demonstrates how contemporary economic theories, such as rational choice theory, public choice theory, game theory, and neo-institutionalist economics can be successfully applied to resolve the issues currently existing in science studies and science and technology policy.

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The economics of scientific knowledge

The Commercialization of Science and the Response of STS

The article addresses the issue of dynamics of science, in particular of new sciences born in twentieth century and developed after the Second World War (information science, materials science, life science). The article develops the notion of search regime as an abstract characterization of dynamic patterns, based on three dimensions: the rate of growth, the degree of internal diversity of science and the associated dynamics (convergent vs. proliferating), and the nature of complementarity. The article offers a conceptual discussion for the argument that new sciences follow a different pattern than established sciences and presents preliminary evidence drawn from original data in particle physics, computer science and nanoscience.

Search Regimes and the Industrial Dynamics of Science

Proliferation dynamics in new sciences

The economics of scientific knowledge (ESK) is one of the youngest members in the heterogeneous field of ‘Science Studies’. Being itself an example of the ‘crossing of boundaries’ movement that characterises a big part of recent academic activity, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to provide a comprehensive definition of ESK. However, for practical purposes we need in this survey some criteria which help to keep its content under reasonable limits, both in terms of extension and of coherence. So, one prima facie plausible definition of ESK, as including any piece of research having to do with ‘the economic study of the production and diffusion of scientific knowledge’, would force us to include in this paper such an enormous body of literature that at least a full book would be necessary to revise it. 1 On the other hand, the fact that this survey is part of a book on the philosophy of economics, belonging itself into a bigger Handbook of Philosophy of Science , suggests that we may select, from this immense literature, just those works dealing with questions more or less related to the traditional topics in the philosophical study of science, i.e., mainly topics of epistemological or methodological character. Hence, my working definition of ESK will be the application of concepts and methods of economic analysis to the study of the epistemic nature and value of scientific knowledge .

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The Economics of Scientific Knowledge

1 Once upon a time, say around the era of David Ricardo and Karl Marx, political economy was primarily concerned with the production of national wealth. This ―classical‖ notion tended to hang on long into the 20 th century, well after the invention of neoclassical economics in the 1870s (Mirowski, 1989, chap. 7). Nevertheless, there was no denying that within neoclassical economics, exchange had displaced production as the primary topic of interest; this informed the definition of economics articulated by Lionel Robbins that its proper subject was the ―allocation of scarce means among given ends‖. But subsequently something rather extraordinary happened around the middle of the 20 th century, gaining momentum as the century waned. More and more, economics at the cutting edge (as opposed to the textbooks) became relatively cavalier about treating trade as static allocation, and instead became all wrapped up in the image of the market (or the agent) as a processor of information or knowledge. I am not just referring here simply to or assertions that knowledge was the source of all economic growth (Romer, 1990), or endless arguments over whether rationality is ―bounded‖ or not (Conlisk, 1996). I mean instead that, if your goal in life was to get published in a highly-ranked economics journal, you could no longer safely cast your analysis in terms of the old familiar trope of static allocation. As Kenneth Arrow (in Colander et al, 2004, p.292) put it: ―one of the biggest differences between 1950 and 2000 is the much greater role now given to the role of knowledge and information.‖ Economists now bandy about the term ‗information' in their papers almost as freely as they had once resorted to the term ‗prices'. Clearly something epoch-making had happened to economics, but what precisely was it? Had the avant-garde imperiously consigned all that had gone before to a bonfire of the vanities? Sometimes the more impetuous amongst the cognoscenti wrote as though it did: There is no single new Law of Economics… The world is not convex; the behavior of the economy cannot be described as if it were solving a (simple) maximization problem; the law of supply and demand has been repealed (Stiglitz, 1985, p.22) 2 In other instances, various notables hastened to reassure the rest of us that nothing had really changed at all, and that, contrary to most impressions, the info-fascination was just a minor variation on …

The economics of scientific knowledge

Citations

The Commercialization of Science and the Response of STS

Search Regimes and the Industrial Dynamics of Science

Proliferation dynamics in new sciences

The Economics of Scientific Knowledge

The Mirage of An Economics of Knowledge

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