NBER Working Papers · 2026 · Apoorva Babbar、Shawn Kantor、Alexander Whalley、Jingyuan Zeng
中文摘要
本文考察公共研发如何塑造冷战时期太空竞赛中技术变迁的方向，及其对美国制造业的后果。既有研究已记录了公共研发对创新与经济增长的影响，但关于以使命为导向的公共投资是否将创新引向自动化、以及这如何影响劳动力市场，所知仍较少。我们利用各行业和各地区对NASA太空竞赛投资暴露程度的差异，估计1947年至1992年间公共研发对创新与制造业结果的影响。我们将新开发的专利全文数据自动化度量与政府参与专利活动的历史证据相结合，表明在同一技术类别内，NASA资助的专利在系统上比非NASA专利更具自动化密集性。对太空竞赛活动暴露程度更高的行业和地区经历了劳动份额的持续下降，这与为太空应用开发的节约劳动技术的扩散相一致。相反，我们几乎未发现技能构成发生系统性变化的证据。这些发现表明，以使命为导向的公共研发能够塑造技术变迁的方向，并产生持久的分配后果。
Abstract
This paper examines how public research and development shaped the direction of technological change during the Cold War–era Space Race and its consequences for US manufacturing. While prior research has documented the effects of public R&D on innovation and economic growth, less is known about whether mission-oriented public investment directed innovation toward automation and how this affected labor markets. We exploit variation in exposure to NASA's Space Race investments across industries and locations to estimate the effects of public R&D on innovation and manufacturing outcomes from 1947 to 1992. Combining newly developed measures of automation in full-text patent data with historical evidence on government involvement in patenting, we show that NASA-sponsored patents are systematically more automation-intensive than non-NASA patents within the same technological classes. Industries and locations more exposed to Space Race activity experienced persistent declines in labor share, consistent with the diffusion of labor-saving technologies developed for space applications. In contrast, we find little evidence of systematic changes in skill composition. These findings show that mission-oriented public R&D can shape the direction of technological change and have lasting distributional consequences.