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The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly disrupted the scientific enterprise, but we lack empirical evidence on the nature and magnitude of these disruptions. Here we report the results of a survey of approximately 4,500 Principal Investigators (PIs) at U.S.- and Europe-based research institutions. Distributed in mid-April 2020, the survey solicited information about how scientists' work changed from the onset of the pandemic, how their research output might be affected in the near future, and a wide range of individuals' characteristics. Scientists report a sharp decline in time spent on research on average, but there is substantial heterogeneity with a significant share reporting no change or even increases. Some of this heterogeneity is due to field-specific differences, with laboratory-based fields being the most negatively affected, and some is due to gender, with female scientists reporting larger declines. However, among the individuals' characteristics examined, the largest disruptions are connected to a usually unobserved dimension: childcare. Reporting a young dependent is associated with declines similar in magnitude to those reported by the laboratory-based fields and can account for a significant fraction of gender differences. Amidst scarce evidence about the role of parenting in scientists' work, these results highlight the fundamental and heterogeneous ways this pandemic is affecting the scientific workforce, and may have broad relevance for shaping responses to the pandemic's effect on science and beyond.

We develop a model of commercial smuggling in which some firms smuggle a portion of the cigarettes they sell. The model is used to estimate the extent of smuggling across state lines and the effects of federal efforts to control smuggling via the Contraband Cigarette Act (CCA). We find that commercial smuggling accounted for three to four percent of all cigarettes sold during the 1970s, a decade of high excise tax differentials. Further, the CCA had the unintentional effect of increasing commercial smuggling, a result consistent with a change in enforcement and modes of smuggling reported subsequent to the Act.

This paper analyzes how institutional differences affect university entrepreneurship. We focus on ownership of faculty inventions, and compare two institutional regimes; the US and Sweden. In the US, the Bayh-Dole Act gives universities the right to own inventions from publicly funded research,whereas in Sweden, the professor privilege gives the university faculty this right. We develop a theoretical model and examine the effects of institutional differences on modes of commercialization; entrepreneurship or licenses to established firms, as well as on probabilities of successful commercialization. We find that the US system is less conducive to entrepreneurship than the Swedish system if established firms have some advantage over faculty startups, and that on average the probability of successful commercialization is somewhat higher in the US. We also use the model to perform four policy experiments as suggested by recent policy debates in both countries.

Bilateral trade flows are used to examine the Linder hypothesis and the effect of exchange-rate variability in a gra vity-type trade model derived from an underlying demand and supply mo del. A behavioral model is used to justify examining these issues joi ntly. The model performs well empirically using a sample of seventeen countries for the period 1974-82. The authors find overwhelming supp ort for the Linder hypothesis and this version of the gravity model. Moreover, they find strong support for the hypothesis that increased exchange-rate variability affects bilateral trade flows. Copyright 1987 by MIT Press.