Mid-sized cities outperform major metros at turning economic growth into patents

It seems obvious to me, too, when considered in terms of available capital providing means for experimenting with unproven ideas.

But I think the opposite may legitimately be the intuition for people of generations before ZIRP and the notion of inventiveness when resources are scarce or you're simply out of work. You can see it in the themes of many movies and other media in the 80s and early 90s, too, the hero arc of the inventor down on their luck. I think the idea carried forward for people in their formative years then.

This analysis is about the oil industry, what's true about the oil industry may or not be true about some other industry.

Other industries don't have the same boom bust cycle. You could argue that tech does, but there it is always a different tech each time that is driving it. Without O/G it is always the same basic reason behind it - a massive time lag between demand changes and supply responses.