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

在过去十年里，学术研究的资金，特别是生命科学领域的资金迅速增加，2008年总额达到180亿美元。2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(ARRA)额外提供了82亿美元的联邦资源，用于资助大学和其他学术中心的生命科学研究。这项研究通过追踪联邦资金在研究渠道中的路径来检查资金的影响。考虑到的特殊影响包括来自非联邦来源的额外资金，应用知识的创造，以及想法的商业化。该项目的智力优势是开发了实证方法，并进行了分析，将ARRA 2009作为一项“自然实验”，分析联邦研发资金增加对大学非联邦资金的影响。它还使用计量经济学技术来检验联邦政府对生命科学研发的资金对授予大学的专利的影响。最后，它使用企业联盟的数据并进行初步分析，以了解联邦资金对联盟形成、生产率和研究商业化的影响。广泛影响：研究涉及构建一个新的数据集，将联邦资金数据和大学与企业联盟的结果结合起来，为研究界未来进行更详细的实证评估奠定基础。这项研究揭示了联邦研究支出在整个研究过程中是如何转化为知识和医疗产品的。总而言之，这项研究提供了更多信息，使科学和技术政策制定者能够评估纳税人资助的生命科学研究对整个社会的好处，并就需要利用的优势和需要解决的弱点提供指导。

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.