Measuring Research and Development Expenditures in the U.S. Economy (2005) / Chapter Skim
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2 Uses and Users
2 Uses and Users
Pages 33-47
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From page 33... ...
The result is that the portfolios of recurring and special surveys of R8:D expenditures at the start of the 21st century are somewhat eclectic. The surveys range from the flagship federal funds, industrial ROD, and academic spending surveys, which cover the major sectors of ROD activity, to the more narrowly focused survey of federal support for universities, colleges, and nonprofit institutions and the survey of scientific and engineering research facilities at colleges, to the infrequent surveys of innovation, nonprofit institutions, and state ROD spending.
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From page 34... ...
points out that ROD expenditure data are often taken as the best surrogate indicator of innovation, in part because of the high degree of industry and firm detail and wide industry coverage and in part because they are the most consistently collected data with annual time series that extend back for decades. Thus, they are taken to represent the best time series related to innovation.
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From page 35... ...
A growing group of hands-on SRS data users include academic administrators in the nation's colleges and universities and planners and policy makers in industry who have much at stake in federal policies and funding programs. Academic researchers seeking to understand scientific processes and explore relevant science and technology policy issues are critically important data users.
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From page 36... ...
Previous studies have concluded that SRS has served several of its multiple user-constituents reasonably well. Representatives of the user community who participated in focus groups and structured interviews for the study Measuring the Science and Engineering Enterprise generally believed SRS is already doing an excellent job (National Research Council, 2000)
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From page 37... ...
is another heavy user of SRS RED expenditure data. The range of NSB's interests, for example, can be gleaned from a content examination of its biennial report, Science and Engineering Indicators, for which the SRS staff has primary production responsibility.
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From page 38... ...
OMB data are based on federal budget authority by functional category, while NSF data report federal obligations. OMB data also include budget authority for Rc'icD plant, a category that is not included in the NSF data.l The primary coin of the llntetview with David Radzanowsh and Dand Trinkle, Of lice of Management and Budget, January 14, 2003.
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From page 39... ...
39 realm for OMB is "budget authority," in that OMB manages and reports the federal budget-by-budget authority Classifications. It is important to understand the distinction between the Various measures of ROD activity: budget authority, obligations, outlays, and expenditures (see Box 2-1)
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From page 40... ...
global change research program; networking and information technology; and the national nanotechnology initiative. The ROD budget authority data published by OMB in the president's budget request are closely monitored by the ROD community.
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From page 41... ...
The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and the House of Representatives Committee on Science have jurisdiction over nondefense federal scientific research and development programs, and specifically over the programs of the National Science Foundation. SRS expenditure data are often used in committee reports and in testimony before these committees.
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From page 42... ...
While expressing general satisfaction with the data, the CRS representative requested a breakdown of federal ROD funding by congressional district. He also urged presentation of data by budget authority rather than outlays and obligations, and in a manner compatible with the organization of the congressional appropriation process, that is, with data disaggregated by the nine congressional appropriation categories.
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From page 43... ...
NSF data are used to provide a historical context for these more current data. In a report on the "new economy" prepared by the Progressive Policy institute, 5 of 39 indicators drew on SRS data from either Science and Engineering Indicators or Nationa/ Patterns of ROD Resources, compared with three drawn from the Economic Report of the President and seven drawn from Bureau of Labor Statistics data (Atkinson and Court, 1998)
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From page 44... ...
If a company invests in new plants for two distinct products, BEA would prefer that data collection activities track the investments and their effects separately for the two products. Since the Census Bureau collects data for the NSF industry survey at the operating establishment level, much of the need at BEA for separate data on separate products is satisfied.
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From page 45... ...
Several significant adjustments to the SRS data were required to make them malleable to the national accounts, including removal of expenditures for ROD structures and equipment, converting fiscal to calendar years and federal obligations to expenditures, and, importantly, substituting judgmental estimates for ROD data that have been suppressed by NSF to avoid disclosure of confidential data. A more recent study (Fraumeni and Okubo, 2002)
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From page 46... ...
The current dollar expenditures levels for privately financed R8`D are obtained from the NSF industry R8`D series, while price deflators and estimates of depreciation are developed by BLS. The BLS data on multifactor productivity deal only with the drrect return to research and development, that is, productivity gains by industries identified by the amount of R8`D they do for themselves The Indirect effects of research and development obtained by purchasers further along the chain of production are likely to be significant.
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From page 47... ...
Despite these shortcomings, it is expected that BLS use of the NSF data will grow in the future because a competing series derived from the Occupational Employment Survey has been discontinued. Program Management Integration of ROD activities into the national accounts and for productivity estimates are not the only interest in ROD at the national level.
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