Please note: Kyoobok has left the "Economics" group at Duke University; some info here might not be up to date.
| Office Location: | 308C, social science B/D |
| Email Address: | |
| Web Page: | http://www.duke.edu/~kl15 |
Typical Courses Taught:
| PhD | Duke university | 2006 |
| BA | Sogang University | 1995 |
Current projects: R&D portfolio and Productivity Growth
My dissertation consists of two related papers that investigate how the different kinds of R&D can affect the productivity growth. Several institutional reforms in the early 1980s have made it easier for firms or researchers to obtain patents for the results of basic research in the U.S. Several empirical papers have examined whether those patent reforms increased innovative effort or innovative activities; they have found no evidence that could be plausibly attributed to patent reforms. However, I find that the ratio of basic research to total research increased dramatically after the patent reforms. Those findings are not what economists usually expect. For example, in his seminal paper, Griliches (1986) found that basic research appeared to be more important as a productivity determinant than other types of R&D. The first paper attempts to find a theoretical explanation about these contradictory findings by distinguishing between basic and applied research. The second paper studies how the productivity growth is affected as the result of basic research becomes general purpose technology. The result can suggest what the policy maker has to consider for patent policy.