Using Scientific Publications to Evaluate Government R&D Spending: The Case of Energy

世界各地政府在风能和太阳能等替代能源的研究和开发方面的支出正在增加。 这些技术中的许多仍然过于昂贵，如果没有一些公共支持，就无法与化石燃料竞争。然而，评估研究支持的有效性是复杂的，特别是因为公共和私人研究资金的混合。此外，由于政府支持的是基础研究，而不是直接应用研究，研究成果与最终商品化产品的开发之间存在很长的滞后期，因此可能需要数年时间才能实现其对技术的影响。 本项目在此背景下解决了三个研究问题：第一，政府研发如何影响基础研究的回报？ 第二，政府对研究与发展的支持是否存在回报递减的情况，以致增加对研究与发展的支持会减少项目的成果？ 第三，这些出版物对应用研究有什么影响？ 该项目建立了一个数据库，使用来自美国，日本和欧洲，以评估政府资助的能源研发的效果。 智力价值：该项目为评估政府研发开发了一个新的理论框架，使边际和平均影响的研究成为可能。 它还创建了一个独特的数据库，通过将出版物数据与美国能源专利的引用联系起来来回答这些重要问题。 该数据库能够解决重要的问题，例如检查专利引用出版物需要多长时间，以及什么信息对新技术的开发最有用。更广泛的影响：这项研究可能被用来提供指导方针，以帮助更有效地分配政府的研究资金。 因此，对整个社会的更广泛影响表现为能源和气候政策的潜在变化。 更广泛地说，由于调整成本，政府资助的回报可能会减少，这方面的证据不仅为能源研发政策提供了信息，也为其他部门增加研究资金的建议提供了信息。

Government spending on research and development of alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power is growing around the world. Many of these technologies are still too costly to be competitive with fossil fuels without some public support. Yet assessing the effectiveness of the research support is complex, particularly because there is a mix of both public and private research funding. In addition, because government support is for basic, rather than directly applied research, there is a long lag between research results and the development of the final commercialized product, so it may take a number of years for its effect on technology to be realized. This project addresses three research questions in this context: First, how does government R&D affect the returns to basic research? Second, are there diminishing returns to government R&D support, so that increases in R&D support less fruitful projects? Third, what is the impact of these publications on applied research? The project builds a database that uses data on scientific publications from the U.S., Japan, and Europe to assess the effect of government-sponsored energy R&D. Intellectual Merit: The project develops a new theoretical framework for evaluating government R&D which enables the study of marginal as well as average affects. It also creates a unique data base to answer these important questions by linking publication data to citations on U.S. energy patents. The database enables important questions to be addressed, such as examining how long it takes for publications to be cited by a patent and what information is most useful to the development of new technology. Broader Impacts: The research could potentially be used to provide guidelines to help allocate government research dollars more effectively. The broader impacts to society at large is thus in the form of potential changes in energy and climate policy. More broadly, evidence on the potential for diminishing returns to government funding due to adjustment costs informs not only energy R&D policy, but also proposals for research funding increases in other sectors.