r&d

The California Technology Trade and Commerce Agency report offers California state and regional policymakers a county-by-county analysis of research and development trends. California ranks first in both university and industrial research and development. Forty-four billion dollars worth of research is conducted annually in the state.

The National Science Foundation Info Brief outlines trends over 30 years in federal and non-federal support for academic research and development (R&D). The brief reports that while federal spending for academic R&D grew by an inflation adjusted 180 percent between 1972 and 2000, the findings reveal federal support played a diminishing role compared to non-federal sources, which grew by nearly 350 percent during the period.

The National Science Foundations Info Brief found the 20 states with the least total research and development (R&D) expenditures increased their share of the total pot in 1999 to 5 percent. The lowest 20 states captured only 4 percent of the nations R&D investment.

The European Commission presented its strategy to respond to the Barcelona European Councils call to raise research spending to 3 percent of the European Unions average Gross Domestic Product by 2010. The report states that Japan already has achieved the 3 percent level and the U.S. is coming closer and that coordinated action at European, national and regional levels is necessary to make Europe more attractive to business investment in research and development.

This study relies upon a twelve-year panel of output, employment and investment for Swedens 285 municipalities, together with data on the location of university researchers and students, to estimate the effects of exogenous changes in educational policy upon regional development. It finds important and significant effects of this policy upon output and productivity, suggesting that the economic effects of the decentralization on regional development are economically important.

The working paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research argues that a strong university research component is critical to local tech-based economic development. Spillovers from university patenting also was found to be more localized than industrial patenting. The paper also suggests spillover from new products, although weaker than patent spillovers, are still more localized for universities than industrial product development.

The author develops an industry-level index of capital-embodied research and development by capturing the extent of research and development directed at the capital goods in which a given industry invests.

The study released by the Council for Chemical Research and commissioned by 27 chemical companies, laboratories, and government agencies reveals the importance and benefits of increased private and public research and development investment for the sector. The study includes econometric, bibliometric and historical analyses of chemical research investment.

The Commerce Department’s Office of Technology Policy report indicates research and development investment in 2000 rose sharply by 9.3 percent in inflation-adjusted terms, increasing from $145.6 billion in 1999 to an estimated $162.7 billion in 2000. The increase reverses a five-year trend of slowing annual percentage increases in corporate R&D investment and approaches the high of a 10.2 percent annual increase set in 1995.

Findings of the report indicate that the gap results primarily from annually comparing two separate and distinct types of financial data—federal obligations and performer expenditures—that are not comparable.