How Economics Shapes Science

How Economics Shapes Science PDF Author: Paula Stephan
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674267559
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
The beauty of science may be pure and eternal, but the practice of science costs money. And scientists, being human, respond to incentives and costs, in money and glory. Choosing a research topic, deciding what papers to write and where to publish them, sticking with a familiar area or going into something new—the payoff may be tenure or a job at a highly ranked university or a prestigious award or a bump in salary. The risk may be not getting any of that. At a time when science is seen as an engine of economic growth, Paula Stephan brings a keen understanding of the ongoing cost-benefit calculations made by individuals and institutions as they compete for resources and reputation. She shows how universities offload risks by increasing the percentage of non-tenure-track faculty, requiring tenured faculty to pay salaries from outside grants, and staffing labs with foreign workers on temporary visas. With funding tight, investigators pursue safe projects rather than less fundable ones with uncertain but potentially path-breaking outcomes. Career prospects in science are increasingly dismal for the young because of ever-lengthening apprenticeships, scarcity of permanent academic positions, and the difficulty of getting funded. Vivid, thorough, and bold, How Economics Shapes Science highlights the growing gap between the haves and have-nots—especially the vast imbalance between the biomedical sciences and physics/engineering—and offers a persuasive vision of a more productive, more creative research system that would lead and benefit the world.

How Economics Shapes Science

How Economics Shapes Science PDF Author: Paula Stephan
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674267559
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Get Book

Book Description
The beauty of science may be pure and eternal, but the practice of science costs money. And scientists, being human, respond to incentives and costs, in money and glory. Choosing a research topic, deciding what papers to write and where to publish them, sticking with a familiar area or going into something new—the payoff may be tenure or a job at a highly ranked university or a prestigious award or a bump in salary. The risk may be not getting any of that. At a time when science is seen as an engine of economic growth, Paula Stephan brings a keen understanding of the ongoing cost-benefit calculations made by individuals and institutions as they compete for resources and reputation. She shows how universities offload risks by increasing the percentage of non-tenure-track faculty, requiring tenured faculty to pay salaries from outside grants, and staffing labs with foreign workers on temporary visas. With funding tight, investigators pursue safe projects rather than less fundable ones with uncertain but potentially path-breaking outcomes. Career prospects in science are increasingly dismal for the young because of ever-lengthening apprenticeships, scarcity of permanent academic positions, and the difficulty of getting funded. Vivid, thorough, and bold, How Economics Shapes Science highlights the growing gap between the haves and have-nots—especially the vast imbalance between the biomedical sciences and physics/engineering—and offers a persuasive vision of a more productive, more creative research system that would lead and benefit the world.

Keys to the City

Keys to the City PDF Author: Michael Storper
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400846269
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Why do some cities grow economically while others decline? Why do some show sustained economic performance while others cycle up and down? In Keys to the City, Michael Storper, one of the world's leading economic geographers, looks at why we should consider economic development issues within a regional context--at the level of the city-region--and why city economies develop unequally. Storper identifies four contexts that shape urban economic development: economic, institutional, innovational and interactional, and political. The book explores how these contexts operate and how they interact, leading to developmental success in some regions and failure in others. Demonstrating that the global economy is increasingly driven by its major cities, the keys to the city are the keys to global development. In his conclusion, Storper specifies eight rules of economic development targeted at policymakers. Keys to the City explains why economists, sociologists, and political scientists should take geography seriously.

Science, Democracy, and Curriculum Studies

Science, Democracy, and Curriculum Studies PDF Author: John A. Weaver
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319938401
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
In this book John A. Weaver suggests curriculum studies scholars need to engage more in science matters. It offers a review of science studies writing from Ludwick Fleck and Thomas Kuhn to Philip Mirowski. The volume includes chapters on the rhetoric of science with a focus on the history of rhetoric and economics then on the rhetoric of models, statistics, and data, a critique of neoliberalism and its impact on science policy and the foundations of democracy, Harry Collin’s and Robert Evans’ theory of expertise followed by chapters on feminism with a focus on the work of Sharon Traweek, Karen Barad, and Vinciane Despret, postcolonial thought, with attention paid to the work of Daniela Bleichmar, Londa Schiebinger, Judith Carney, Sylvia Wynter, Paul Gilroy, and Sandra Harding, and a final chapter on Nietzsche’s philosophy of science. Each section is introduced by an interlude drawing on autobiographical connections between curriculum studies and science studies.

Economic Lives

Economic Lives PDF Author: Viviana A. Zelizer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069115810X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
Revealing the human side of economic life Over the past three decades, economic sociology has been revealing how culture shapes economic life even while economic facts affect social relationships. This work has transformed the field into a flourishing and increasingly influential discipline. No one has played a greater role in this development than Viviana Zelizer, one of the world's leading sociologists. Economic Lives synthesizes and extends her most important work to date, demonstrating the full breadth and range of her field-defining contributions in a single volume for the first time. Economic Lives shows how shared cultural understandings and interpersonal relations shape everyday economic activities. Far from being simple responses to narrow individual incentives and preferences, economic actions emerge, persist, and are transformed by our relations to others. Distilling three decades of research, the book offers a distinctive vision of economic activity that brings out the hidden meanings and social actions behind the supposedly impersonal worlds of production, consumption, and asset transfer. Economic Lives ranges broadly from life insurance marketing, corporate ethics, household budgets, and migrant remittances to caring labor, workplace romance, baby markets, and payments for sex. These examples demonstrate an alternative approach to explaining how we manage economic activity—as well as a different way of understanding why conventional economic theory has proved incapable of predicting or responding to recent economic crises. Providing an important perspective on the recent past and possible futures of a growing field, Economic Lives promises to be widely read and discussed.

Economics as a science

Economics as a science PDF Author: Kenneth Ewart Boulding
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description


Science on the Ropes

Science on the Ropes PDF Author: Carlos Elías
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030129780
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
In this controversial essay, Carlos Elías addresses the worldwide phenomenon that is threatening the scientific and economic progress of Western countries. The rise and influence of magic and irrationality in the media, in social networks and at universities is a disturbing phenomenon: many Western students no longer want to pursue STEM (Science, Technologies, Engineering, and Math) careers. This lucid and well-written book addresses one of the key issues of public debate: the deteriorating state of science in Western countries and their governments, and its rise in Asian countries. The author compares two distinct models: the Spanish or Latin model, which closed the door on science with the Counter-Reformation, and that employed by a second group of countries where science was encouraged. Elías suggests that a similar development could now be taking place between Western countries (where the press, television and social science academics are becoming increasingly critical towards science) and Asia, where most prime ministers (and other politicians) are scientists or engineers. This book is intended for STEM educators (both at secondary schools and universities), scientists and academics interested in scientific culture in the era of fake news.

Falling Behind?

Falling Behind? PDF Author: Michael S. Teitelbaum
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069115466X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
How the fear of a shortage in American science talent fuels cycles in the technical labor market Is the United States falling behind in the global race for scientific and engineering talent? Are U.S. employers facing shortages of the skilled workers that they need to compete in a globalized world? Such claims from some employers and educators have been widely embraced by mainstream media and political leaders, and have figured prominently in recent policy debates about education, federal expenditures, tax policy, and immigration. Falling Behind? offers careful examinations of the existing evidence and of its use by those involved in these debates. These concerns are by no means a recent phenomenon. Examining historical precedent, Michael Teitelbaum highlights five episodes of alarm about "falling behind" that go back nearly seventy years to the end of World War II. In each of these episodes the political system responded by rapidly expanding the supply of scientists and engineers, but only a few years later political enthusiasm or economic demand waned. Booms turned to busts, leaving many of those who had been encouraged to pursue science and engineering careers facing disheartening career prospects. Their experiences deterred younger and equally talented students from following in their footsteps—thereby sowing the seeds of the next cycle of alarm, boom, and bust. Falling Behind? examines these repeated cycles up to the present, shedding new light on the adequacy of the science and engineering workforce for the current and future needs of the United States.

Life Science Careers

Life Science Careers PDF Author: Jasna Markovac
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031506944
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description


The Political Economy of Science, Technology, and Innovation in China

The Political Economy of Science, Technology, and Innovation in China PDF Author: Yutao Sun
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108490581
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Demystifies the role of the Chinese state in its development of S&T and innovation using the theory of political economy.

The Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Science

The Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Science PDF Author: David Tyfield
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317412028
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description
The political economy of research and innovation (R&I) is one of the central issues of the early twenty-first century. ‘Science’ and ‘innovation’ are increasingly tasked with driving and reshaping a troubled global economy while also tackling multiple, overlapping global challenges, such as climate change or food security, global pandemics or energy security. But responding to these demands is made more complicated because R&I themselves are changing. Today, new global patterns of R&I are transforming the very structures, institutions and processes of science and innovation, and with it their claims about desirable futures. Our understanding of R&I needs to change accordingly. Responding to this new urgency and uncertainty, this handbook presents a pioneering selection of the growing body of literature that has emerged in recent years at the intersection of science and technology studies and political economy. The central task for this research has been to expose important but consequential misconceptions about the political economy of R&I and to build more insightful approaches. This volume therefore explores the complex interrelations between R&I (both in general and in specific fields) and political economies across a number of key dimensions from health to environment, and universities to the military. The Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Science offers a unique collection of texts across a range of issues in this burgeoning and important field from a global selection of top scholars. The handbook is essential reading for students interested in the political economy of science, technology and innovation. It also presents succinct and insightful summaries of the state of the art for more advanced scholars.