The impact of public basic research on industrial innovation: Evidence from the pharmaceutical industry

While most economists believe that public scientific research fuels industry innovation and economic growth, systematic evidence supporting this relationship is surprisingly limited. In a recent study, Acemoglu and Linn (2004) identified market size as a significant driver of drug innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, but they did not find any evidence supporting science-driven innovation from publicly funded research. This paper uses new data on biomedical research investments by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to examine the contribution of public research to pharmaceutical innovation. The empirical analysis finds that both market size and NIH funded basic research have economically and statistically significant effects on the entry of new drugs with the contribution of public basic research coming in the earliest stage of pharmaceutical drug discovery. The analysis also finds a positive return to public investment in basic biomedical research.     

从专利引文看公共科学对技术创新的重要作用

定量考察公共科学对技术创新的贡献大小 ,可以为政府支持基础研究提供有用的论据。专利引文分析 ,是测度基础研究对技术创新的贡献的一个重要方法论。通过对专利引证的科学论文的计量研究 ,发现 :工业技术与公共科学的联系不断加强 ,公共科学在技术创新中起着重要的作用。其政策意义在于 ,政府应该继续支持基础研究 ,而企业应该加强对外部知识资源的“吸收能力”的建设。     

The economics of universities in a new age of funding options

The environment in which universities in the United States and some other countries operate has been changing, creating discussion of privatization of public universities. This paper examines the implications for US universities of greater access to royalties for federally funded, private-goods research, and reduced government grants or transfers to support public-goods research. Conditions under which increased private-goods research for out-of-state firms (developing patents and private market applications) leads to higher tuition and reductions in instruction and basic research are developed. The likely outcome is greater privatization of public universities, which may lead to a new public-private structure for what have been the leading US public research universities.     

公共政策对企业创新支持的绩效——基于直接补贴与税收优惠的比较分析

政府公共政策是否促进了企业创新？公共政策和技术创新的研究领域一直不乏“促进论”和“抑制论”的争论。现有文献还缺乏系统研究对此进行甄别。本文认为,政府直接补贴和税收优惠对不同所有制类型企业的创新活动激励具有差异性,从而无法简单归入“促进论”或“抑制论”。本文以全国第一次经济普查的26326家规模以上内资企业、2970家港澳台投资企业以及3625家外资企业分析对象,通过地区层面和行业层面的实证分析得出了以下结论：（1）政府对内资企业研发活动的直接补贴政策显著提高了内资企业的研发强度。这支持了“促进论”的观点;（2）税收优惠政策对港澳台投资企业的创新活动增加有着较强的促进作用,这是“促进论”中成本效应发挥的重要结果;（3）港澳台和外商投资企业的研发强度与政府直接补贴呈现出显著的负相关关系,这意味着“抑制论”中挤出效应的作用机制使政府直接补贴对企业创新活动了负面作用。本文的政策含义是政府在实施促进企业自主创新活动的各项公共政策中,应该以对内外资企业都统一的公平的税收优惠为主而减少直接补贴的使用;在利用直接补贴对企业研发提供支持时,应以对内资企业补贴为主,减少港澳台和外资企业的直接补贴。     

Internal and external discipline: The effect of project leadership and government monitoring on the performance of publicly funded R&D consortia

R&D consortia have been regarded as an effective means of promoting innovation. Several R&D consortia obtain public financial support, which may affect their governance structure and performance. This study investigates the governance mechanisms of publicly funded R&D consortia and their effects on innovation performance. Few studies have empirically addressed the effect of project monitoring by the government or the role of project leadership in R&D consortia. Focusing on a major support program for R&D consortia in Japan and using a sample of 251 firms that participated in publicly funded R&D consortia from 2004 to 2009, we empirically confirm that to enhance firms’ innovation performance, both project leadership as internal discipline and government monitoring as external discipline matter. Our results show that project leadership directly improves firms’ innovation performance, while firms’ commitment indirectly affects performance. Project leadership and government monitoring also promote commitment. Furthermore, both factors are complementary: consortia members are more willing to accept a project leader’s coordination under stricter government monitoring.     

Government as entrepreneur: Evaluating the commercialization success of SBIR projects

Thinking of government as entrepreneur is a unique lens through which to view a subset of government actions. The lens is not a template for an evaluation of government policy; rather, it is a characterization that underscores the government's purposeful intent, ability to act in new and innovative ways, and willingness to undertake policy actions that have uncertain outcomes. Our focus is on the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. We argue that the innovative action of government - the innovative use of public resources through the SBIR program to target and support research in small firms - does lessen innovation barriers that cause small firms to underinvest in R&D. However, this government action is subject to entrepreneurial risk, namely the a priori uncertainty that the funded research will result in a commercialized product, process, or service. We quantify the uncertainty that the government accepts in the context of innovation supported by the SBIR program; or stated alternatively, we quantify the probability that a project funded by the SBIR program will fail to commercialize its results. Our empirical results show that the entrepreneurial risk that characterizes the SBIR program is, on average, somewhat more than the probability of failing to get heads on the toss of a fair coin. Importantly, however, our evidence shows that there is a large range in the entrepreneurial risk that the government accepts—across the projects, the predicted probability of failure covers essentially the entire range from 0 to 1.0.     

NTBFs—the French case

New technology-based firms (NTBFs) represent only a small proportion of the firms established in France each year; they attract very little specific attention from the national statistical apparatus and are considered to be of marginal significance by both the public authorities and financial institutions. Although the definition of NTBFs is problematic, the available evidence suggests that the survival rate of technology-based firms is higher than that of other start-ups. The most successful in terms of growth belong to dense and convergent networks through which they interact with larger firms and research organisations. There is very little public policy specifically targeted on NTBFs in France. Instead, public financing has been devoted mainly to the development of SMEs in general—in support of their role in the creation of new employment—and to supporting technology-based firms, both large and small, to strengthen the international competitiveness of the French industry.     

Knowledge to money: Assessing the business performance effects of publicly-funded R&D grants

UK Research Councils (UKRCs) spend around £3bn pa supporting R&D and innovation. We provide a comprehensive assessment of these grants on the performance of participating UK firms, using data on all projects funded by UKRCs over the 2004–2016 period and applying a propensity score matching approach. We exploit the richness of the data available in the Gateway to Research database by investigating the heterogeneous effect of these projects across several novel directions which have not been explored before. We find a positive effect on the employment and turnover growth of participating firms, both in the short and in the medium term. Exploring impacts across different types of firms we find stronger performance impacts for firms in R&D intensive industries and for smaller and less productive firms. We also consider how impacts vary depending on the characteristics of the funded research projects in terms of partners characteristics, receipt of other research grants and grant value. Finally, we focus on the different sources of grants, analysing in particular the evolution in the funding strategy of Innovate UK. Our results have implications for the extent and targeting of future Research Council funding both in the UK and elsewhere.     

Two for the price of one?: Additionality effects of R&D subsidies: A comparison between Flanders and Germany

We empirically test whether public R&D subsidies crowd out private R&D investment in Flanders and Germany, using firm level data from the Flemish and German part of the Community Innovation Surveys (CIS III and IV). Both the non-parametric matching estimator and the conditional difference-in-differences estimator with repeated cross-sections (CDiDRCS) clearly indicate that the crowding-out hypothesis can be rejected: funded firms are significantly more R&D active than non-funded firms. In the domain of additionality effects of R&D subsidies, this paper is the first to apply the CDiDRCS method.     

R&D internationalization, R&D collaboration and public knowledge institutions in small economies: Evidence from Finland and the Netherlands

This paper investigates domestic and foreign innovating firms’ determinants of R&D collaboration with domestic universities and public knowledge institutes in Finland and the Netherlands. We put particular emphasis on the impact of incoming academic spillovers on the probability to co-operate with these public R&D institutes.Based on data from Community Innovation Surveys we find that foreign firms in the Netherlands are less likely to co-operate with domestic public knowledge institutions than domestic firms, while in Finland no significant difference can be detected. Another result is that incoming knowledge spillovers are an important determinant for R&D collaboration with domestic public knowledge institutions in both countries. In case of foreign firms in Finland, incoming knowledge spillovers affect the probability to co-operate with public knowledge institutions more positively compared to domestic firms. For the Netherlands no substantial difference could be found in this respect. Further, innovating firms in Finland that require academic or basic knowledge do not co-operate significantly more with public knowledge institutions than those that need applied knowledge. At the same time they are willing to share knowledge with public R&D partners. In the Netherlands innovating firms that require relatively more basic than applied knowledge, increase the probability of co-operation with Dutch universities and public knowledge institutions but there is reluctance to share proprietary knowledge with public R&D partners. For both countries no significant difference between foreign and domestic firms with regard to academic knowledge requirements could be found. This raises the issue whether Finnish innovation policies with a strong focus on R&D co-operation provide incentives for strategic behaviour by domestic public partners to put more emphasis on applied research.     

The impact of firm participation in R&D programmes on R&D partnerships

R&D subsidies designed to encourage innovation efforts by firms may have intended and unintended effects on the way they organize their innovation process. We present empirical evidence on how R&D subsidies affect firms’ R&D cooperation strategies. In particular, we investigate whether receiving public R&D subsidies affect the probability that a firm will set up an R&D partnership with a public research organization (PRO), or with other firms. Our main findings are: (i) public support significantly increases the chances that a firm will cooperate with a PRO, and (ii) public support also increases the likelihood that a firm will establish private partnerships, but to a smaller extent and only when firms have intangible knowledge assets. These results suggest that public R&D programmes trigger a behavioural change in firms’ R&D partnerships, alleviating barriers to cooperation.     

Organisational learning antecedents and open innovation: Differences in internationalisation level

The aim of this study is to inspect differences in internationalisation level of firms from a transitional economy based on their innovation outcomes, open innovation and organisational learning practices. Results indicate that firms with lower internationalisation level owe their innovation success to coupled and outbound open innovation practices that originate from market research, competitor tracking and public information. Mediating effect of outbound innovation is present in the relationship between market research and innovation success. Firms with higher internationalisation level do not exhibit significant effect of open innovation on innovation success, but their organisational learning antecedents such as market research and research and development negatively affect innovation success, while public information and forecasting have a significant positive effect on innovation success. The major contribution of this study is the understanding of how organisational learning antecedents and open innovation practices interact in firms with different internationalisation levels, whereby firms with higher internationalisation level already have competitive advantage that lower internationalisation firms need to achieve.     

Measuring the economic benefits from R&D: improvements in the MMI model of the United Kingdom National Measurement System

The benefits and priorities of public funding of R&D programmes are the subject of considerable research and debate and a number of methodologies have been suggested which might allow us to arbitrate on the issues involved. This paper looks at one method that is actually used in practice to evaluate and rank publicly funded R&D programmes in the UK. We describe the improvements that have been made to the mapping measurement impact (MMI) model, which is used by the UK Department of Trade and Industry to assess the economic benefit to industry of different research projects funded as part of the United Kingdom National Measurement System. The model has been in use for more than 5 years as a means to compare publicly funded R&D programmes. It allows evaluation of their benefit and prioritisation of future funding schemes and has potential for wider application in other areas of public R&D investment both inside and outside the UK.     

The determinants of success of R&D projects: evidence from American-Israeli research alliances

Until 1997, a basic premise of Israeli R&D support programs had been the principle of neutrality—all eligible projects were funded. With a binding budget constraint, the government had to select the projects it funded and thus to depart from neutrality. An optimal departure would favor those projects that have less of a chance to succeed without support. In this paper, I examine the performance of government supported collaborative research projects. I find that size and organizational form affect the probability of technical success and duration to commercialization in a way that suggests departing from neutrality by preferring less established firms.     

Does green public procurement trigger environmental innovations?

Green public procurement has gained high political priority and is argued to be an effective demand-side policy to trigger environmental innovations. However, the empirical evidence on its innovation impact is limited. We construct a novel firm-level dataset to investigate the effect of winning public procurement tenders with additional environmental award criteria on firms’ introduction of environmental innovations. Employing cross-sectional difference-in-differences methods, we find that winning public procurement awards with environmental selection criteria increases a firm's probability of introducing more environmentally friendly products on average by 20 percentage points. We show that this effect is driven by small and medium-sized firms and is not statistically significant for larger firms. Furthremore, there is no statistically significant effect on the introduction of more environmentally friendly processes.     

A new industry creation and originality: Insight from the funding sources of university patents

Scientific breakthroughs coming from universities can contribute to the emergence of new industries, such as in the case of biotechnology. Obviously, not all research conducted in universities leads to a radical change from existing technological trajectories. Patents and patent dynamics have long been recognized as critical in understanding the emergence of new technologies and industries. Specifically, patent citations provide insight into the originality of a discovery that has received patent protection. Yet while a large body of literature addresses the impact of patent originality on various firm performance measures, we address the question of what conditions drive patent originality in the process of knowledge creation within the university. Using data on patented cancer research, we examine how research context – as reflected by the funding source for each scientist – is associated with patent originality. We find that when university scientists are partly funded by their own university, they have a higher propensity to generate more original patents. By contrast, university scientists funded either by industry or other non-university organizations have a lower propensity to generate more original patents. The significance of our findings in the cancer research setting call for further research on this question in other research fields.     

实现开放获取 支撑科技创新——有关国家和机构支持科技期刊开放出版的政策与措施

文章分析了学术论文获取面临的严峻挑战,总结了国际科技界支持公共资金资助学术论文开放出版的共识,梳理介绍了国际典型科研资助机构和教育科研机构支持开放出版的具体政策,提出中国应重点推进公共资助科研论文开放获取、建立经济高效的开放出版支持机制、继续加强支持开放存缴、加快推进图书馆文献保障机制转型发展等建议。     

Evaluating the tail of the distribution: the economic contributions of frequently awarded government R&D recipients

Government R&D programs are intended to assist in the commercialization of technology and provide for the greater public good. Among the primary instruments for this type of government action are competitive grants for small, high-tech businesses. However, there is a perception among scholars and administrators that a small number of firms receive a large number of awards without furthering government objectives. The term mill is a less than complimentary term used to reference a firm that receives multiple government R&D awards. The criticism is based on a belief that this group of firms do not advance innovative technologies and do not serve the needs of the awarding agency. As a result, there are attempts to limit the number of awards that firms receive, with limited consideration of the firms themselves and the role they play in the larger innovation system. We specifically examine the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, focusing on a group of firms at the extreme tail of the distribution of awards. We consider the business model employed by these firms, their patenting and licensing behavior, and the products they introduce to the market. We also consider their impacts as incubators of spinoff firms, research environments that augment human capital, and suppliers to government through procurement.     

Understanding the impact of commercialization on public support for scientific research: is it about the funding source or the organization conducting the research

This research examines the influence of commercialization on support for scientific research. It compares the effects of the funding source with the type of organization on public support for stem cell research. Using a national Australian telephone survey (n = 1000), the results reveal that support drops significantly when scientific research is funded by private rather than public interests, and even more so when it is conducted in a private company rather than a public university. Respondents' preference for university research was enhanced if they trusted universities, distrusted major companies and believed that the research would be beneficial. A preference for public funding was also associated with lower trust in companies and a belief that the research would benefit people. Implications of these results are discussed in relation to the challenge of maintaining public support in an increasingly commercialized research environment.     

The differential impact of privately and publicly funded R&D on R&D investment and innovation: the Italian case

This paper explores the impact of a specific R&D policy instrument, the Italian Fondo per le Agevolazioni della Ricerca (FAR), on industrial R&D and technological output at the firm level. Our objective is threefold: first, to identify the presence or absence of private R&D investment additionality/crowding-out within a pooled sample and in various firm subsets (identified by region, size, level of technology, and other features), while also taking into account the effect of single policy instruments or mixes of them. Secondly, to analyse the output (innovation) additionality by comparing the differential impact of privately funded R&D and publicly funded R&D expenditure on applications for patents filed by firms. Thirdly, the paper will compare the structural characteristics of firms showing additionality with those of firms showing crowding-out, in order to determine the firm characteristics associated with successful policy interventions. Our results suggest that FAR is effective in the pooled sample, although no effect emerges in some firm subsets. In particular, while large firms seem to have been decisive for the success of this policy, small firms present a more marked crowding-out effect. Furthermore, the firms’ growth strategies and ability to transform R&D input into innovation output (patents) seem to have a positive effect in terms of additionality.