credit: Open Data 4 Development

Nicholas A. Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences, came up with an evidence-based toolkit for governments looking to create innovation.

The new toolkit, which aims to teach governments about which policies that are backed by research, is in collaboration with economists Heidi Williams of Stanford University and John Van Reenen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In a recent paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, there are five policies that Bloom and his colleagues say that can effectively drive innovation.

These five policies include: 1) Offering tax incentives for R&D; 2) Promoting free trade; 3) Supporting skilled migration; 4) Training workers in STEM fields; and 5) Directing grants for R&D.

Bloom and his colleagues also found three policies that may go toward increasing innovation but not evidence-supported, such as: 1) Providing incentives for University researchers; 2) Engaging in intellectual property reform; and 3) Embarking on mission-oriented projects.

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