Eroding Our Foundation: Sequestration, R&D, Innovation and U.S. Economic Growth

Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service, 2013

President Obama has requested $147.696 billion for research and development (R&D) in FY2011, a $343 million (0.2%) increase from the estimated FY2010 R&D funding level of $147.353 billion. Congress will play a central role in defining the nation's R&D priorities, especially with respect to two overarching issues: the extent to which the federal R&D investment can grow in the context of increased pressure on discretionary spending and how available funding will be prioritized and allocated. Low or negative growth in the overall R&D investment may require movement of resources across disciplines, programs, or agencies to address priorities. This report will be updated as Congress acts on appropriations bills that include funding for research, development and related funding. Under the President's request, six federal agencies would receive 94.8% of total federal R&D spending: the Department of Defense (DOD, 52.5%), Department of Health and Human Services (largely the National Institutes of Health) (21.8%), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (7.4%), Department of Energy (7.6%), National Science Foundation (3.8%), and Department of Agriculture (1.7%). NASA would receive the largest dollar increase for R&D of any agency, $1.700 billion (18.3%) above its FY2010 funding level. The DOD would receive the largest reduction in R&D funding, $3.542 billion (4.4%) below its FY2010 level. President Obama has requested increases in the R&D budgets of the three agencies that were targeted for doubling in the America COMPETES Act (over 7 years) and by President Bush under his American Competitiveness Initiative (over 10 years) as measured using FY2006 R&D funding as the baseline.

2004

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis 1959 1969 1979 1989 1999 2002 T HE Bureau of Economic Analysis has been work­ ing on a research and development (R&D) satel­ lite account since 2004 to help economists gain a better understanding of R&D activity and its effect on eco­ nomic growth. This article introduces the 2006 satellite account, which provides preliminary estimates of R&D investment and the impact of R&D investment on such measures as gross domestic product (GDP), invest­ ment, and saving. The full 2006 satellite account, released in Septem­ ber and accessible via <www.bea.gov/bea/newsrelar chive/2006/rdspend06.htm>, modifies the accounting conventions used in the national income and product accounts (NIPAs) in order to explore the impact of “capitalizing” R&D—that is, treating R&D spending as an investment rather than as an expense. The new ac­ count does not affect the official measure of GDP. Rather, the satellite account provides a framework to explore new methodologies...

CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research - Zenodo, 2022

Major developments in governmental research and development (R&D) funding are associated with the emergence of programs as funding instruments. Programs include an explicit mission for R&D, scientific priorities including type of research to be undertaken, procedures for attaining funding, and a budget that also contains regulations for monitoring and evaluation. A better understanding of programs implies understanding how R&D government policies are put into actions by research funding organizations and how funding programs are designed and implemented to address problems of social relevance nominated at policy levels. The aim of this chapter is to give a broad overview of the main theoretical advancements dealing with programs as instruments of governmental R&D policy. It seeks to explore two questions: what is the role of programs in government funding of R&D? How can we understand programs theoretically and design frameworks to empirically study them? A first contribution is to illustrate the diversity and the complex nature of research programs, as well as the strategies and objectives they reveal, the actors implementing the programs and the modes of implementation. A second contribution of the chapter is to develop new conceptual framings based on this theoretical review, also indicating relevant methods for doing empirical studies. Examples of recent and currently developing empirical data and infrastructures to investigate the diversity of funding programs using new concepts and empirical insights are discussed.

Handbook on Publication R&D Funding, 2023

The emergence of competition in funding for research and development (R&D) is based on long-term changes in trajectories and rationales for governmental R&D support. Starting from the 1970s, governmental R&D funding was deeply transformed in European countries, and a project-based mode of allocation became more dominant. This had two main reasons. First, the stagnation of the volume of public research funding induced more selective modes of allocation. Second, new policy rationales about efficient use of public resources emphasized competitive allocation as a means to increase the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of research systems (Lepori et al., 2007). More fundamentally, R&D programs are long-term means of the government pursuing strategic goals such as increasing excellence of the research system or reinforcing the collaboration between public and private research performers. The organization of R&D programs is at the core of both project-based and competitive funding. The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of the main theoretical underpinnings and advancements concerning R&D programs as instruments of governmental R&D policy. Programs are meso-level instruments that serve several purposes, such as directing R&D efforts towards specific societal challenges or knowledge domains.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2009

Issues in Science and Technology, 2001

With the administration of George W. Bush commencing under especially difficult political circumstances, careful consideration of science and technology (S&T) policy could well be relegated to the “later” category for months or even years to come. Science advocates may interpret early signs of neglect as a call to lobby Congress for a proposition that already has significant bipartisan support: still larger research and development (R&D) budgets. We believe that sound stewardship of publicly funded science requires a more strategic ...

Policy Sciences, 1976

The barriers to terminating federal research and development vary with the type of program (manpower resource creation, basic or applied research, hardware development) and the functional sector in which it is lodged (defense or civilian). Each has a public/private constituency of sponsors and performers. Some constituencies are much more potent than others. Hence, to kill an R&D program, one must weaken the constituency behind it. Useful strategies for would-be terminators include decremental funding and the amalgamation of competing R&D programs within the same agency.

World Review of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, 2008

This paper analyses the relationship between economic growth and funding for research. The econometric analysis show that Gross domestic Expenditure on R&D (GERD) as percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a important driver of economic growth (R 2 adj = 71%) that is measured by GDP per capita. The optimisation shows that the level of GERD equal to 2.6 maximises the GDP per capita, moreover is important to have global maximum that GERD financed by government is lesser than 30% of total. The paper also discusses Lisbon Strategy and research policy of the USA, Japan and EU countries.

2008

In this paper, we investigate the impact of federal research funding on overall R&D expenditures in life sciences at U.S. universities, as a first step in understanding the efficiency with which taxpayer-funded research influences social welfare and U.S. competitiveness. We use two strategies to deal with the problem that factors specific to the university, say, quality or reputation, may be positively correlated with both federal and non-federal funding. First we include university fixed effects to control for time invariant differences in university quality or reputation. Second, we use predicted funding from NIH, the chief source of research funding for the life sciences, as an instrument for federal funding. We calculate the shares of different NIH institutes in the funding a university received in the base year of analysis, which differs by the specialization of each university. We then calculate the funding universities would have received in subsequent years based on aggregate growth in the budgets of various NIH institutes if the same base-year institute share had persisted. Year-to-year budgets of different NIH institutes and therefore the predicted funding values calculated according to base-year shares are unlikely to be related to changes in other factors that drive a particular university's activity. Our results indicate that an increase in federal funding leads to a more than a dollar-for-dollar increase in life science R&D expenditures at universities.

Journal of Engineering and Technology Management - J ENG TECHNOL MANAGE, 2002

Traditionally, the United States has not set a specific national technology policy or plan like those seen in many other nations. However, the US Government spends large amounts of money on research and development (R&D) through such agencies as Department of Defense (DoD) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This case study investigates the relationship between defense and space R&D expenditures and national technology advancement in the aerospace industry. The lag between R&D expenditures and technology advancement is also examined and modeled.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2008

To respond to America's slipping leadership in commercial innovation the federal government should establish a National Innovation Foundation (NIF)-a nimble, lean, and collaborative entity devoted to supporting firms and other organizations in their innovative activities. By realigning and augmenting the nation's diffuse present efforts the new entity would help create better jobs in America, not just for highly educated "knowledge workers" but for high school graduates in manufacturing and "low-tech services." America's Challenge Action is essential. Innovation drives economic growth, determining America's living standards and those of its metropolitan areas. However, as global competition stiffens, the nation's leadership in innovation is under threat. For example, the United States' share of worldwide total domestic R&D spending fell from 46 percent in 1986 to 37 percent in 2003. Moreover, expanded support for basic research and science education, while important, will not be enough to respond to this challenge. Without a robust, targeted, and explicit federal innovation push, U.S. competitiveness will slip and economic growth will lag.

2006

INNOVATION POLICY BRANCH INDUSTRY CANADA * This is a shortened version prepared for the OECD, Blue Sky conference, to be held in Ottawa, Canada, September 25-27, 2006 # Views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of Industry Canada or the Government of Canada. The author would like to thank Michael Bordt from Statistics Canada, Hollis Whitehead formerly from Industry Canada, and Catherine Peters from Industry Canada for their comments, and all the officers from departments that gave me their departmental information as well as useful comments to make and improve this paper.