ABSTRACT
Science is difficult and costly to do well. The remarkable benefits of scientific research require the efforts, time, and talents of some the very best minds and research teams in the world and the expenditure of significant sums of material and financial resources. Consequently, science is an economic phenomenon. This book systematically creates an economics of science. Many aspects of science are explored from an economic point of view. Throughout the work, the scientist is assumed to be a rational economic agent. Without the assumption of rationality, the resulting theory would have little claim to being economic. Broadly speaking, this economics of science begins with rational economic models of individual scientific activity. The models present an economic approach to both misconduct in science and to the legitimate, normal practices of professional scientists.’ From these issues, this economics of sciences moves to aggregate economic analysis. Here the focus is on market failure, the marketplace of ideas, self-correctiveness, and the organizational and institutional structures of science. Finally, this inquiry ends with an exploration of broader philosophical and methodological themes which result from a systematic economics of science.
