Readers of this blog will recall that the Sloan Foundation’s funding of the NBER Economics of Digitization program was the impetus to starting this blog. Erik and Shane are among the leaders of that program. I am happy to announce today that a program that I will co-direct with Fiona Murray (MIT) has just been funded by the Sloan Foundation to the tune of $976,000 over the next three years. That program will examine The Economics of Knowledge Contribution and Distribution. Here is the Rotman press release with more details and here is the abstract from our proposal:
The project’s goal is to understand the economic drivers of knowledge contribution and the distribution of that knowledge. Two classes of phenomena motivate our study: movements for the free provision of knowledge and information and the growing participation of individuals in creative activities not dominated by the promise of monetary reward. The proposed program will focus on research designed to generate understanding the economic drivers of scientific contributions and to analyze the impact of digitization on knowledge contribution.
The main activities of the program will be to fund research in this area around the world as well as disseminate it through a new web-site, a series of workshops and a policy-relevant summit to be staged in 2013. An Executive Board to guide the program’s direction has already been established with initial membership from Professor Martha Gray (MIT), Professor Paula Stephan (GSU), Professor Philippe Aghion (Harvard) and Ling Wong (Gates Foundation).
As you can see, there will be plenty of activity going on and much of it will be of interest to readers here as there is considerable linkage with other Sloan programs on digitization.
Digitopoly 
the $976K grant was seemingly awarded with a hint of irony…
“movements for the free provision of knowledge and information and the growing participation of individuals in creative activities not dominated by the promise of monetary reward.”