Institute for Progress — November 2022 Update
Hello!
Hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving. A few team announcements: Todd Moss joined IFP as a nonresident Senior Fellow; he’ll be working on U.S. visa reform. Santi Ruiz came on board as Senior Editor (and he’s writing this newsletter to you now!). And Senior Innovation Economist Matt Clancy is headed to Open Philanthropy as a Research Fellow (though he’ll still be affiliated with IFP as a Senior Fellow).
🦃 Here are some tasty morsels from the IFP team:
✍️ Published Work
Biosecurity Fellow Adin Richards wrote a policy brief on Unlocking American Agricultural Innovation
Adin also wrote a white paper explaining how inefficient subsidies for inefficient fuels hurt Americans, titled How Biofuel Mandates Raise Food and Energy Prices
Senior Immigration Fellow Jeremy Neufeld co-authored a research paper on Global Skill Partnerships, bilateral migration agreements that train workers in needed skills within a country of origin prior to migration
Co-founder Caleb Watney wrote an essay in American Affairs asking the real questions: But Seriously, How Do We Make an Entrepreneurial State?
A new working paper from Director of Science Policy Heidi Williams and coauthors tries to decipher the complicated patchwork of patents and regulatory exclusivities needed to understand biomedical innovation
Jeremy’s letter to the editor was also published in the Wall Street Journal, asking “Why Are H-1B Visas Apportioned by Lottery?”
“Awarding visas more selectively will improve the caliber of workers in the program, even if caps aren’t raised… Replacing the lottery with a points system or salary-based ranking should unite H-1B skeptics and advocates.”
🎤 Interviews & Events
Caleb and Heidi spoke on a panel hosted by the USPTO and Santa Clara University School of Law about policy pilots; here’s Heidi’s roundup
Co-founder Alec Stapp joined MarketWatch’s “Best New Ideas In Money” podcast to explain how high-skilled immigration can boost American innovation
“What we're really seeing now is an increasing war for talent globally, where countries are trying new, intentional programs that make it very easy for talented people to move there. And I think, in the United States, we have yet to see a comparable effort.”
📰 Media
Heidi was quoted, and Senior Fellow Pierre Azoulay’s work was cited, in the Wall Street Journal, discussing the “Stagnant Scientific Productivity Holding Back Growth”
“Heidi Williams, an economist at Stanford University and director of science policy at the Institute for Progress, said grants typically commit a scholar to complete a specific project, even if during the research the project proves less promising than expected. Better, she said, to abandon that project and let the researcher redeploy their capital and labor to a problem closer to the frontier of science. This would likely result in more failed projects but, hopefully, more breakthroughs. ‘Science is about taking risk, and that means many projects aren’t going to work. We should build a system for funding science that explicitly acknowledges and supports that.’”
The Journal also quoted Todd at length in a piece on visa delays
“The average wait time for a tourist visa appointment—the most commonly sought—is about seven weeks. But demand varies greatly by location, with some of the longest wait times in countries such as India, Mexico and Brazil where demand is highest, according to data compiled by Todd Moss, a former State Department official who is now a fellow at the Institute for Progress and founder of Visa Limbo, a website that tracks the longest wait times. Wait times in Indian cities including Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata all exceed two years, according to Mr. Moss… Mr. Moss said the issue of wait times is especially problematic compared with European nations and China, which are all processing visas at a faster clip. ‘If people have to wait months to get a visa to visit for business, tourism, or to see their families, we are not serious,’ he said. ‘The U.S. cannot possibly compete with China or the Europeans if we cannot issue visas efficiently.’”
Senior Fellow Brian Potter received a shoutout in Morning Brew for his history of the World Trade Center’s development
🏗️ Construction Physics by IFP Senior Fellow Brian Potter
Comparing process improvement in manufacturing and construction: Duco vs Drywall
Building Fast and Slow: The Empire State Building and the World Trade Center (Part I)
👋 Tweet for the Road
