Presenter:

Scott Stern

Authors:

Jeffrey L. Furman, Fiona Murray, Scott Stern

Chair: Ernst R. Berndt Mon June 5, 2006 10:45-12:15 Room 335

This paper evaluates the impact of restrictions on embryonic stem cell use in US Federally funded scientific research on the geography of scientific discovery. In order for localized knowledge spillovers to be translated into sustained scientific leadership, researchers in close proximity to an original discovery must be able to exploit that discovery more rapidly and more intensively than distant researchers. Local researchers must be able to take scientific advantage of a discovery more quickly than their more distant competitors are able to catch up. This paper exploits an exogenous shock to the process of step-by-step scientific discovery to assess the sensitivity of regional scientific agglomeration to a temporary shift in the knowledge production process. Specifically, this paper examines the impact of the Bush Administration’s policy of limiting the scope of Federally funded human embryonic stem cell research to experiments using a already existing stem cell lines. Over the past several years, research into the biological foundations of stem cells has been described by biologists as one of the most promising areas of scientific progress, with rapid advances using both embryonic and non-embryonic stem cells, human as well as non-human sources. Moreover, at least in the initial period after the key discoveries of the 1990s, stem cell research has tended to be geographically localized, with a small number of locations and institutions accounting for a very large fraction of the overall discoveries. In August, 2001, the Bush Administration enacted a policy that placed a subtle but substantive restriction on the freedom of Federally funded researchers; it limited experiments using human embryonic stem cells and conducted with Federal funds to only a small number of possible stem cell lines that had been developed prior to the date of the policy change. While researchers were free to use these specific stem cell lines or to seek alternative funding sources, the policy seems to have placed significant restrictions on academic researchers dependent on Federal funding, and that adapting to the policy required a period of adjustment and exploration. Observers have suggested that this unexpected delay in the activity of those at the scientific frontier provided an opportunity for less well-positioned researchers to catch up and for equally well-positioned researchers to forge ahead…