Innovation & Regional Economic Growth
Jonathan Silberman, Nivedita Mukherji, Ronald Tracy

U.S. states can no longer primarily compete on their natural research endowment, low-cost labor or tax incentives. Increasingly innovation is the key to driving growth and prosperity in the global knowledge economy. We focus on understanding the knowledge economy at a regional level. Our work has important policy implications since those regional economies successful in the knowledge economy will maintain economic competitiveness, leading to greater flow of ideas that generate innovation and growth. This is especially relevant for Michigan as much of the technology derived from the automobile industry has not resulted in an entrepreneurial culture that converts new knowledge to economic growth. Research is ongoing in the following areas: (1) production of ideas using patent data; (2) impact of patents on state economic growth; (3) measuring the ability of metropolitan areas to move existing knowledge produced in the metro area to new knowledge or learning in the metro area; and (4) measuring the knowledge spillovers from patents.