 Do expert surveys underrate lower-income countries?R. Urbatsch Research Policy, 2020, vol. 49, issue 8 Abstract: Perceptions of countries’ policy environments and innovation efforts drive important investment and regulatory decisions, but those perceptions may be biased. One particular concern is that evaluations of richer countries might be inflated compared to evaluations of poorer countries, as general stereotypes of national success spill over into assessments of research capability. Comparison of World Economic Forum survey assessments of businesses’ research spending with official spending figures reveals that, among countries spending comparable amounts on research, richer countries receive higher survey ratings. Richer countries’ educational outcomes are similarly rated higher than similarly performing poorer countries’. These findings suggest that perceptions may systematically disadvantage economically poorer countries, thereby misdirecting real-world investments and policy decisions derived from those rankings. Keywords: National income; Research and development; Education; Bias; Survey (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:49:y:2020:i:8:s0048733320301360 DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2020.104058 Access Statistics for this article Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.