Of Mice and Academics: Examining the Effect of Openness on Innovation
利用1990年代末NIH协议降低学术机构获取基因工程鼠成本的准自然实验，发现开放性促进新研究者进入和更多元的研究路径，且不减少新鼠的创造，揭示了强知识产权限制会降低探索多样性的成本。
This paper argues that openness, by lowering costs to access existing research, can enhance both early and late stage innovation through greater exploration of novel research directions. We examine a natural experiment in openness: late-1990s NIH agreements that reduced academics’ access costs regarding certain genetically engineered mice. Implementing difference-in-differences estimators, we find that increased openness encourages entry by new researchers and exploration of more diverse research paths, and does not reduce the creation of new genetically engineered mice. Our findings highlight a neglected cost of strong intellectual property restrictions: lower levels of exploration leading to reduced diversity of research output.