Scientific Publications at U.S. Federal Research Laboratories

Albert Link and John Scott

No 20-12, UNCG Economics Working Papers from University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics

Abstract: In this paper, we focus on scientific publications as an innovative output from the research efforts at U.S. federal laboratories. The data used relate to Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs). The relationship between R&D expenditures at these federal laboratories and their peer-reviewed scientific publications allows us to make inferences about the return to public-sector R&D. We examine two complementary statistical models. From the first model, we find that a 10 percent increase in constant dollar public-sector R&D is associated with between a 15.5 and 21.5 percent increase in scientific publications. From the second model, we find that the annual rate of return generated by an additional $1 million of R&D-based knowledge stock varies across the FFRDCs, averaging about 93 additional scientific publications, with the statistically significant values ranging from about 1 to as many as about 400 additional scientific publications.

Keywords: Scientific publications; Federal laboratory; R&D; Evaluation; Return on investment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H42 O33 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2020-12-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino and nep-sog
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Journal Article: Scientific publications at U.S. federal research laboratories (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:uncgec:2020_012

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