Kyle Higham

Let me know if you cannot access the paper at the link below and I can send an accessible version :)

The biggest gains went to smaller, less Japan-exposed firms, and especially when the underlying inventions were of high quality.

We exploit a change in US patent law that made Japanese patent filings available in English much earlier, then track how quickly US inventors start building on that knowledge (via patent citations).
Language barriers accounted for almost half(!) the delay in uptake pre-change.

Language barriers and the speed of international knowledge diffusion - Nature Human Behaviour Language barriers hinder technical knowledge diffusion. Higham and Nagaoka show that a US patent policy change reduced the lag in US citations of Japanese patents, particularly for firms with limited ...

I am very proud to share our new publication in Nature Human Behaviour! This is joint work with Sadao Nagaoka at RIETI, and has been a long time coming.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Economics of Ideas, Science, and Innovation Online PhD Short Course | Institute for Progress

Are you a PhD student interested in the economics of innovation? The Economics of Ideas, Science, and Innovation Online short course, hosted by IFP, is back for the third time! ifp.org/economics-of...

Capital City Complex Systems Symposium 2026 The Capital City Complex Systems Symposium 2026 explores cutting-edge knowledge of complex systems & complexity & how this knowledge is used to drive system change.

We've just published the programme for the Capital City Complex Systems Symposium 2026, and registrations are open 👀

#cccss26 #complexsystems

www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/conferences/...

If you want a silver lining, the lead author on that paper is a Wellingtonian

The flow of information between research and policy is not a one-way street, it is a constant dialogue 🧪🧵

Indeed - I love this talk, but "we" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here!

Fewer Marsden Fund grants after government cuts A major research fund has been forced to slash its grant allocation by more than $20 million next year.

More cuts to the Marsden Fund. This time $20 million from the annual budget cut starting next year. This is on top of previous cuts by this government. They are trying to skip the 'priming the pump' step of public research as a driver of the economy. How well that is going to work?
#NZPOL

A meme from Breaking Bad with Jesse saying "New Zealand. That's where they made Lord of the Rings".

Want to come to New Zealand this summer? The call for abstracts for the Capital City Complex Systems Symposium 2026 is now open: forms.gle/g22s2dR85oFq... 🧪

I see the ghouls are fretting about higher taxes making rich people leave the country - the dreaded 'capital flight' 😱.
I mean where do you even start with this crap? Well, not by arguing about estimates of how many millionaries we'll lose. Let's rehearse some lines... [1/n]

The 3M ones are available now 🙂

NZ First introduces bill seeking referendum on fluoride in drinking water The bill aims to mandate local authorities to hold a binding referendum on water fluoridation.

Oh do F off

NZ First introduces bill seeking referendum on fluoride in drinking water
www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360...

The IP component of the incoming reforms has gone largely without comment; however, the idea that giving a larger share of IP to scientists will incentivise commercialisation really shows how little this government understands the motivations of those who produce public goods.

Something to keep in mind for 2025

Written by James Miller of A Small Fiction

The competition dynamics between strains is super interesting! Out of interest, why is the wastewater data so noisy? I would have expected more homogeniety, but I suppose this depends on the point of the treatment process at which the measurement is taken?

I know economists love concise paper titles, but this is getting a little ridiculous...

Open letter on importance of research in the social sciences and humanities Open letter on importance of research in the social sciences and humanities   Tēnā koe Prime Minister, The role of the Royal Society Te Apārangi, as set out in the Royal Society of New Zealand Act,...

www.royalsociety.org.nz/news/open-le...

If you think of stock markets as prediction markets, then these papers might be of interest:
doi.org/10.1093/qje/...
doi.org/10.3386/w33056

Observing and calculating economic benefit is basically impossible even in the most clear cut of cases. Treating research funding as an investment in the financial sense is setting our science system up for failure and will likely be used as justification for further cuts.
bsky.app/profile/kyle...

Finally, staying in my lane, others have much more informed understandings of impact measurement in the social sciences and humanities, and I defer to those researchers. (Though I note that their social impact is often MORE measurable and timely than in the hard sciences). \thread

(Side note: I am particularly concerned for environmental research of all kinds. What are the contributions to economic growth of biodiversity or better water quality? If the funder isn't convinced by your economic argument, the pool of funding just got a lot smaller.)

In sum, and ironically, if we want to quantify the economic benefits of research, we need to do a hell of a lot more social science in that direction. Measuring the societal outcomes of research is REALLY COMPLEX, even in the most simplistic version of research progression in the hard sciences.

Many of these questions are impossible to answer definitively and these are also a small subset of important questions that need answering before even attempting to measure an ROI in good faith.

How do we account for intangible effects, such as when a researcher’s work inspires someone to pursue a STEM career? What is the value of maintaining an active and engaged research workforce?

After all of this, we then have to ask: how long do we wait before assessing these impacts? Is a 10-20 year wait for social impact politically acceptable?

5) Say the product improves the well-being of those that can access it - how do we measure the change in well-being? If it is a medical product, it may extend lives - do we put an economic value on this outcome? What if only the wealthy can access it?

4) (cont'd) Who funded the commercialisation process, and does it matter? How should we split the total impact between the initial grant and later investments? What implications does this have for ROI calculations?

4) The private sector may also integrate the research into their products, or even license the patent - knowledge is 'non-rival'. How do we measure this impact? Are profits of foreign firms included in economic benefit, or only those of domestic firms?