Collaborative Research: Public R&D and the Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity

政府S在资助研发方面的作用是合理的，因为由于基础研究的长远眼光，以及基础研究成果难以产生财务回报，私营部门在研发方面的投资可能不足。这个项目为理解联邦研发支出自2010年以来的下降是否损害了美国的竞争力提供了有价值的见解。该项目利用一种新的长期技术轨迹量化指标--专利影响力，来确定发明活动的公共资金是否支持私营部门将回避的研究。该项目调查了联邦机构对未来科学和技术突破可能产生的影响的研究的支持变化的长期影响。S研究战略为衡量基础研究资金对发明的长期影响这一难题提供了解决方案，并为政策制定者提供了一种更好地评估可能导致长期科技突破的项目类型的方法。公共对专利中嵌入的知识的贡献是通过专利来衡量的？S引用了专利和学术研究，其资金来源，以及发明发生在哪里(即大学、国家实验室或私营公司)。然后，这些属性与专利影响力相关。影响度量的使用是计算密集型的，并且直到最近才可行，因为计算技术的进步。这项研究首次对公众对研发的支持对技术发展轨迹的长期影响进行了全面、定量的评估，这是以专利衡量的。对2001年至2004年期间授予和申请的专利进行的一项试点研究表明，虽然平均专利数量相似，但与私营部门资助的专利相比，某些类型的政府资助更有可能导致突破性发明的产生。分位数回归分析的使用适应了研究和开发回报的不对称性质，并允许研究资金对突破性发明的影响。该项目将计算所有数字化专利的影响力和收到的影响力衡量标准。

The government?s role in sponsoring R&D has been justified because the private sector is likely to underinvest in R&D due to the long horizons of basic research and the difficulties in generating financial returns to basic research outcomes. This project provides valuable insights to understand whether the decline in Federal R&D spending since 2010 hurts U.S. competitiveness. This project leverages a new quantitative measure of long term technological trajectories, patent influence, to determine if public funding of inventive activity supports research that would be eschewed by the private sector. The project investigates the long term implications of changes to federal agency support of research on the likely impact of future scientific and technological breakthroughs. The project?s research strategy presents a solution to the difficult problem of measuring the long term effects of basic research funding on invention and offers policy makers a way to better assess the types of programs that are likely to lead to long term scientific and technological breakthroughs.The public contribution to the knowledge embedded in a patent is measured through the patent?s citations to patents and academic research, its funding sources, and where the invention occurred (i.e., university, a national lab or a private firm). These attributes are then related to patent influence. The use of the influence measure is computationally intensive and only recently feasible given advances in computing technology. This research is the first to provide a comprehensive, quantitative assessment of the long term influence of public support of research and development on technological trajectories, as measured by patents. A pilot study of patents granted and applied for between 2001 and 2004 suggests that while average patents are similar, some types of government funding are more likely to lead to the generation of breakthrough inventions than patents funded by the private sector. The use of quantile regression analysis accommodates the skewed nature of the returns to research and development and allows studying funding effects on breakthrough inventions. The project will calculate both influence and received influence measures for all digitized patents.