经济与社会科学2025papers.ssrn.com
研发回报上升：好想法并没有变得更难找
The rising returns to R&D: Ideas are not getting harder to find
进阶 · 约 90 分钟读完前置知识：宏观经济学基础、研发生产率相关文献（如 Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find）、计量经济学基础
导读
这篇论文挑战了「点子越来越难找」这一主流看法——即研发投入不断增加、研发生产率却在下降——主张研发的回报其实在上升。评论者将其论点概括为：更多研发虽然仍带来生产率提升，却可能让其他研发的成果加速过时、彼此抵消。
HN 关注点：既然研发投入回报并不递减，为何宏观生产率增长仍显疲软，讨论集中在如何解释这一矛盾。
HN 评论精选
这几条评论里：质疑 2 补充 2
质疑认为中国作为快速跟随者削弱了西方研发回报，是论文结论的替代解释。
如果 OECD 的数据可信，房间里的大象是：自 2010 年以来，中国每年让西方研发的价值损失了约 5000 亿美元。这正是快速跟随者如此有价值的原因——你让其他所有人在错误的造物方式上浪费钱。这也让研发回报看起来差得多。
mensetmanusman查看英文原文
If the OECD is to be believed, the elephant in the room is that China negated the value of western R&D by about $500B per year since 2010. That’s why being a fast follower is so valuable, you get everyone else to waste money on the wrong ways to build things. It also causes R&D to show much worse returns.
补充45 年研发亲历者认为跨领域团队协作是创新关键，并猜测研发生产率下降与此类特质衰退有关。
我正在写一本关于这个主题的书。我 1978 年在贝尔实验室开始职业生涯，之后在三家创业公司工作过。在研发领域干了 45 年后，我最近退休了。很多时候，我们新发明的灵感来自意想不到的来源：艺术、文化、音乐、历史等等。我说「我们」是有意的，因为新发明很少出自一个人，几乎总是团队协作的产物。我的结论是：发明往往来自知识广博、能团队合作的通才组成的团队。我怀疑研发生产率的下降是否就源于这些特质的衰退？
zw123456查看英文原文
I am writing a book about this topic. I started my career in 1978 at Bell Labs and worked in 3 different startups after that. After 45 years in R&D, I have recently retired. So many times, the inspiration for new inventions we worked on came from unexpected sources; the arts, culture, music, history and many other sources. And I said we on purpose because rarely did a new invention come from one person, it was almost always from collaboration on a team. My conclusion is that invention so often comes from a team of well rounded people with knowledge in many areas and the ability to work in a team. I wonder if the decline in the productivity in R&D comes from a decline in these attributes?
质疑用红皇后假说提出质疑，并把论文的「报废率上升」机制解读为组织复杂度瓶颈。
这看起来像是把红皇后假说直接套用到企业而非物种上。也就是说，在竞争环境中你必须持续投入研发才能维持相对市场地位，因为周围的人也在投入。但论文谈的是单个企业的生产率和总体（大概是全经济范围的）生产率。因此我认为红皇后可能不是全部故事：即使企业因竞争无法获取价值，它们的效率也应仍在提高，生产可能性边界应当在扩张，因为完成同样任务所需资本更少，可腾出资源做别的事。但情况似乎并非如此？那么论文所说的「报废率上升」，似乎是指组织内部变动太大，导致成果无法真正落地、无法兑现潜在的生产率提升？这听起来像是撞上了复杂度的墙，但我感觉自己漏掉了什么。
tgbugs查看英文原文
This would seem to be a direct corollary to the red queen hypothesis applied in the context corporations instead of species. That is, in a competitive environment you have to keep spending R&D dollars to stay in the same relative market position because everyone else around is spending as well. However the paper talks about productivity of the individual firm and aggregate productivity (presumably across the whole economy). Therefore I think that the red queen may not be whole story, because firms should still be getting more efficient (more productive) even if they can't capture that value due to competition, the production possibilities frontier should be growing because we need less capital to accomplish the same tasks, leaving more for other things. However it seems that this is not the case? So what the paper seems to mean by "increased rates of obsolescence" is that there is so much churn within organizations that they can't actually get something implemented in a way that actually allows them to capitalize on the potential increased productivity? That sounds like a complexity wall, but I feel like I'm feel like I'm missing something.
补充复述论文「研发相互抵消」的论点，并追问其背后的机制。
我想确认自己理解得对不对：论文的主张是，更多研发虽然仍带来生产率提升，却让其他研发取得的成果失效？比如每个人都去开发自己的 LLM。这个想法挺有意思，但为什么会发生这种情况？
moomin查看英文原文
Checking I understand this right: the paper’s contention is that more R&D, whilst still producing productivity gains, is invalidating gains made from other R@D? e.g. everyone developing their own LLM. It’s an interesting idea, but why would that be happening?
历次讨论
- 2025Hacker News 讨论帖142 分 · 97 评
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