Funding of Public strongResearch and Developmentstrong Trends and Changes.pdf

ISSN 1608-7143 OECD Journal on Budgeting – Volume 3 – No. 4 © OECD 2003 Funding of Public Research and Development: Trends and Changes by Gudrun Maass* * Gudrun Maass is Principal Administrator in the Division for Science and Technology Policy, Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, OECD. OECD JOURNAL ON BUDGETING – Volume 3 – No. 4 – ISSN 1608-7143 – © OECD 2003 41 FUNDING OF PUBLIC RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT: TRENDS AND CHANGES 1. Introduction This paper describes trends and practices in the funding of public research and development (RD). It is based on a study which was carried out by the OECD’s Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry. The study dealt with several aspects of the governance of public research such as the structures of science systems, priority setting issues, funding and the management of human resources.1 The paper provides a picture of the structures and schemes for the funding of public RD, the development trends, and the changes as well as the reasons for such changes in OECD member countries.2 2. Funding levels The following graphs (see Figure 1) show that – apart from Switzerland – all countries have increased government funding for public sector research over the last few years. These are figures for 2000/01 or closest available year. While sizeable in absolute terms, increases in funding for public sector research have only kept pace with the expansion of OECD economies. As a share of gross domestic product (GDP), funding for RD in universities and other public research institutions (PRIs) remained essentially flat at 0.61% Figure