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

在世界各地，政府在风能和太阳能等替代能源研发方面的支出正在增长。如果没有一些公共支持，这些技术中的许多仍然过于昂贵，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，特别是因为有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，研究结果和最终商业化产品的开发之间存在很长的滞后，因此其对技术的影响可能需要数年时间才能实现。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？其次，政府研发支持的回报是否在递减，从而导致研发支持力度的增加降低了项目的成效？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、日本和欧洲的科学出版物的数据来评估政府资助的能源研发的影响。智力优势：该项目开发了一个评估政府研发的新理论框架，使研究边际影响和平均影响成为可能。它还创建了一个独特的数据库，通过将出版数据与美国能源专利的引用联系起来，来回答这些重要的问题。该数据库能够解决重要的问题，如审查出版物被专利引用需要多长时间，以及哪些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，帮助更有效地分配政府研究资金。因此，对整个社会的更广泛影响是能源和气候政策的潜在变化。更广泛地说，有证据表明，调整成本可能导致政府资金回报递减，这不仅会影响能源研发政策，还会影响其他部门增加研究资金的提议。

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.