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GCR 99-780 - Estimating Social and Private Returns from Innovations Based on the Advanced Technology Program: Problems and Opportunities
1. INTRODUCTIONThe purpose of this paper, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Commerce, is to bring together the results of previous research of my own and others, to supplement these results with information obtained from a sample of ATP award recipients, and to discuss in a preliminary way some methods that the managers of the Advanced Technology Program might use to estimate and forecast the social and private returns from the R&D projects they support. This paper is meant to be a preliminary, small-scale attempt to put the forecasting problem in perspective and to get some idea of what can reasonably be expected in this regard. It is not meant to come up with detailed recommendations regarding which forecasting technique (or combination of techniques) to use. Nor does it result in a set of forecasts of this kind for particular projects. Instead, it is an effort to determine what can be learned from experience in leading business firms and government agencies, as well as from academic studies, regarding this problem. In 1977, my students and I published both a paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics and a book on the estimation of social and private rates of return from industrial innovations. The models and techniques that were used have been applied frequently, and seem to have proved helpful to policy makers and analysts (Mansfield et al, 1977 a,b). This paper considers how these models and techniques could be adapted to help ATP with the forecasting and estimation problems cited above. As part of this discussion we also look at the sorts of data that might be collected by ATP and/or its contractors in order to make subsequent forecasts (and eventually retrospective estimates) of the social and private rates of return from the R&D projects supported by ATP.1Return to Table of Contents or go to next section. Date created: June 15, 2006 |
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ATP website comments: webmaster-atp@nist.gov / Technical ATP inquiries: InfoCoord.ATP@nist.gov. NIST is an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department |
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