Evaluating the social economic benefits of publicly funded basic research via scientists' career mobility

Christian Zellner

Research Evaluation, 2002, vol. 11, issue 1, 27-35

Abstract: The paper argues that studies of the social role of basic research and its contribution to innovation and technological development in the commercial sector tend to overemphasise the propositional knowledge it produces. Differentiating this propositional knowledge from underlying, generic problem-solving procedures, it is suggested that the latter are socially useful beyond the scientific process. Their universal nature makes them important inputs for the R&D activities of innovative firms. Due to the natural and institutional limits on the transferability of instrumental knowledge, the paper suggests that an evaluation of the social value of basic research must focus on the career trajectories of scientists who migrated from basic research institutions into the commercial sector. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.3152/147154402781776970 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:rseval:v:11:y:2002:i:1:p:27-35

Access Statistics for this article

Research Evaluation is currently edited by Julia Melkers, Emanuela Reale and Thed van Leeuwen

More articles in Research Evaluation from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().