The Impact of Federal Life Science Funding on University R&D

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Funding for academic research, especially in the life sciences, has risen rapidly over the last decade, totaling $18 billion in 2008. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provided an additional $8.2 billion in federal resources to fund life science research at universities and other academic centers. This research examines the impact of the funding by tracing the path of federal funding through the research pipeline. The particular effects considered include additional funding from non-federal sources, the creation of applied knowledge, and the commercialization of ideas.The intellectual merit of the project is the development of empirical methods and conduct of analysis that uses ARRA 2009 as a "natural experiment" to analyze the effects of an increase in federal R&D funding on non-federal funding at universities. It also uses econometric techniques to examine the impact of federal funding for R&D in the life sciences on patents granted to universities. Finally, it uses data on firm alliances and conducts preliminary analysis to understand the effects of federal funding on alliance formation, productivity, and commercialization of research.Broader Impacts: The research involves the construction of a novel dataset that combines federal funding data and university-firm alliance outcomes, setting the stage for more detailed empirical assessment in the future by the research community. The research sheds light on how a dollar of federal research expenditure translates into knowledge and medical products as it traverses the research pathway. In sum, the research provides more information whereby policymakers in science and technology can assess the benefits of taxpayer-funded life sciences research to society at large, and provide guidance on the strengths to capitalize on and weaknesses to address.