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Giles Wilkes Profile picture
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16 Dec, 5 tweets, 1 min read
Rereading Josh Lerner's 2009 book on failed attempts to help Entrepreneurship. On Venture Capital he notes that support is often subject to distortions, such as "pressure to 'spread the wealth': to ensure each region gets its fair share of venture subsidies..."

Just imagine 1/
Evaluating SBIR, he observes how congressmen successfully lobby for it to be in every state. The effectiveness drops drastically when the funds go to the places judged deserving rather than on merit ... 2/
Yes, the contrary force is the (wicked) "Matthew Effect" = "to every one who has will more be given" = or agglomeration.

Sometimes, it is successfully leaned against. Taiwan. Always Taiwan ...
3/
But: "if dozens of PhDs poring for years over econometric models with mountains of historical data have been unable to show how to target industries, how can the typical govt leaders identify good prospects in a compressed time period and with limited information" 4/
Professor Lerner's answer is *matching funds*. This doesn't sound so revolutionary to me - maybe thanks to him it is now common practice. 5/5

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More from @Gilesyb

Giles Wilkes Profile picture
29 Nov
Kate Bingham's speech (link found here ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-2…) is much more interesting than some of the more OTT, civil-service-hating coverage would have you believe. Some points 1/
First, for everything that follows, the monumental scale of what Covid has wrought needs this dramatic reiteration. Note: this is a conservative estimate of global deaths. Very few policy situations occur against such an extraordinary backdrop ...2/
and it could have been worse: SARS' slow-mutating nature allowed the prospect of a vaccine-exit from the nightmare 3/
Read 17 tweets
Giles Wilkes Profile picture
12 Nov
Flattering.

The way I see it: VL were like your drunken mate who promised one bunch of people they could break a 5 minute mile, and another that they could throw a javelin 80m.

When confronted, the punchy answer is, "why can't there by sprinters with huge arms": 1/
So there are three claims. 1: we can deregulate significantly in a growth-boosting way. 2: we can seize state levers, direct resources around brilliantly and 3: you can do both.

Where Cummings is right: laughing at 3 is the least interesting attack (though still well founded) 2/
Take the first. Obviously, deregulate to grow is a looooongstanding agenda, pushed by DC's admittedly lower-calibre predecessors
ft.com/content/94ba1a…
The fruits are always harder to pluck, the returns less impressive and the trade-offs more real than its advocates expect 3/
Read 13 tweets
Giles Wilkes Profile picture
10 Nov
There are so many interesting and thoughtful replies to this; thank you. Some are unnecessarily, even childishly ad hom about HMT - no, seriously, they don't ask these questions as a devious way to evade net zero! 1/
Also, I don't think you get very far if you don't think the choice is meaningful. Borrowing will change whether it is a current or a future taxpayer that takes a hit. That is the point of it. Literally every time HMT once again postpones a fuel duty rise, this happens ...2/
I also have no doubt a bunch of people would like to make the problem easier by imagining massive stimulus growth. My assumption is that we are at economic capacity, and so climate goods displace other goods. No doubt that will make the usual sorts cross 3/
Read 4 tweets
Giles Wilkes Profile picture
9 Nov
Something you learn when you step a little outside narcissistic government world: how businesses performs R&D is often little to do with the Government/universities. Mostly, it is about their competitors, their customers, their employees... Universities come 15th! 1/
This is important because the UK Government has a key target - to raise UK R&D spending to 2.4% of GDP in a few years' time (current level, 1.8-1.9%). Two thirds of that is normally *private* money. HMG's major tool is to pump in more public £££... gov.uk/government/new…
What UK public sector R&D does, and the business sector researches, is likely to be very different. And hence its low position in these rankings. But this is not necessarily a failing of policy 3/
Read 5 tweets
Giles Wilkes Profile picture
9 Nov
I ought to clarify something, in light of my comment on @rcolvile's thread

The report from which the charts are taken do say "no causal proof". But there's another IFS paper that *does* try to get at a causal relationship, which @CPSThinkTank link to ifs.org.uk/uploads/R167-T… 1/
This @TheIFS paper diligently controls for background etc in order to try to isolate the effect of the decision to go to university itself. See, for example, these charts - the RHS one shows *net of student loans* men on average in two courses earning less than non HE 2/
So I would like to absolve CPS of any charge of misrepresenting what the IFS did.

I still think we have to be careful with these findings, as the IFS researchers say themselves. In particular, it is impossible to create the perfect control group ...4/
Read 5 tweets
Giles Wilkes Profile picture
8 Nov
An interesting thread, but it is based on @TheIFS work, and what they *explicitly don't* say is that taking a particular course has a CAUSAL effect of making you poorer. *This* is the work you should read ... and what it says: 1/
ifs.org.uk/uploads/public…
I am sure the CPS means to be careful. But different courses *select different types*. Unless you track what the same type of person would do taking different choices, you cannot say "taking this course HAD THIS IMPACT" (as this tweet appears to) . 2/
Saying "you are worse off *for going to university*" implies a causal consequence. And to reiterate, what IFS says is that they are estimating the distribution of govt spending by course, and this" is not intended to be a valuation of the merits of different courses" 3/
Read 8 tweets

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