Transcript Document

Indicators to characterize
public funding systems
Benedetto Lepori, 28th November
2008
The issue
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Is it possible to produce indicators to characterize/compare public
funding systems including
 The role of different funding agencies
 The allocation methods
 The streams of money
 The beneficiaries
Beyond R&D statistics which is essentially focused on performers
 With limited ability to map funders – performers flows
 With a too simple description of funders (by “sector”)
 Not taking into account the existence of intermediaries
Obvious relevance for public policies of these indicators
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See for example the OECD work on steering and funding of public
research where no data on allocation could be collected
Two PRIME project on the field
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Exploratory project on public project funding
Analysis of CEEC funding systems and of their change
An overall view of public funding
 Four relevant system layers
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State
Funding agencies
Performers’ organisations
Research groups/individuals)
Two main allocation streams
 core funding
 project funding
 Key issues
 Interactions accross layers and funding modes
 Increasing role of performers in driving funding
Policy
layer
National state
Funding agencies (national)
Agencies
layer
Core funding
Organisations
layer
Research
groups
layer
Project funding
Higher Education Institutions and PROs
Internal allocation
International agencies
(EU, ESA, etc.)
Research units
Project funding analysis
 Try to compare countries concerning the role and
composition on project funding
 Identify in each country the instruments which we can
identify as project funding
 As well as the main funding agencies
 A basic definition + a lot of comparative work to treat
in the same way the same instruments
 Collect the data from different sources
 Ministries reports, agencies reports, etc.
 Per year and main beneficiary group
 Data collection and cleaning procedures
 Produce aggregations and international comparisons
 As well as analyses of the evolution in last 30 years
Criteria
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We
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consider project funding if
Attributed mostly for research purposes
Limited in time and scope (not recurrent)
Attributed by an external agency to the research
organization
 No reference to competition/modes of allocation
Issues / problems
 Use for research activities (since we are not looking to
performers) – difficult to assess for example for contracts
 Long-term competitive schemes (centres of excellence)
 Internal competitive schemes to research organizations (or
vertically integrated organizations like academy of
sciences)
Problem cases
 European Space Agency contracts
 Mostly to industry for development of
rockets, satellites, etc.
 Some funding for scientific programs
 It is nearly impossible to ascertain how
much should be considered as R&D
 We adopted a broad delimitation
 Including probably more that what would
be considered as R&D funding
French CNRS
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A very large organization with a double role
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A partially competitive allocation mechanism
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Funding its own laboratories (10%)
Funding joint laboratories with universities (thus partially
outside the CNRS perimeter)
Labelling by CNRS gives access to its resources and there is a
rather high turnover
Mostly in form of personnel, but no mandatory allocation
It is something intermediary between general and project
funds
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Accounting for nearly 10% of public research funding in
France, thus impossible to put in a footnote
Our picture of the French system largely depends on the
choice we do concerning these funds
Considering it as project gives a view of France much nearer to
other Western European countries
See Theves et al. paper
Discussion
 Overall the distinction works and is usable
but
 One needs much care in the comparisons
especially for time series
 We should try to develop a finer typology of
funding instruments in the future
 Intensive discussion was needed to solve
dubious cases
 Ensuring some comparability
 In-depth knowledge of national systems was
essential for this exercise
 …this is not the end of the story…
Categories
 Comparative analysis clearly needs
common categories
 Beyond individual list of
instruments/agencies at national level
 We devise three classifications
 By type of agency (international,
ministry, intermediaries)
 By instrument type
 By beneficiaries
Instrument types
 Intuitively it is clear that there are different
instruments concerning their orientation / type of
research they fund
 But designing a clear classification is very difficult
since these concepts are largely multidimensional
 We end up with a simple distinction between
“academic” / thematic / innovation-oriented
instruments
 However, this is just a rough approximation of policy
intentions, but not necessarily of the research done
 Different features need to be combined to better
understand the significance of instruments for the
research system
 Granularity is a problem since the level of
aggregation is rather high
Data sources and data collection
issues
 There is no unique source of these data,
but they had to be complied from:
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State accounts (France)
Research ministry reports
Agency reports
Some existing databases
Surveys (for example the Swiss R&D survey)
Direct inquiry to ministries
 Most data are available but with
limitations/problems in many cases
 In most cases it was possible to come back to
the ‘70
Data problems
 Funding to companies through loans
 Estimate of cash value
 Project decisions instead of allocations
 One needs some kind of averaging
 European Space Agency
 Use national contribution as proxy (national
return rule)
 Contracts from ministries
 Coverage is problematic outside the formal
programs
…even if the methdology is simple there is a
lot of dirty work to get usable data…
Some selected results
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PF as the second stream of research funding in the six
considered countries
 ¼ to 1/3 of funding volume
 Strong increase in the role in the last years
A composite model of funding instruments
 Some academic, some thematic, some innovation
 Try to accomodate the different goals instead of chosing a
single rationale
Differences between countries remain quite large
 In the organisation of funding agencies and the type of
funding
 Strong dependence on history of organisational structures
One needs to consider carefully this context when designing
European funding policies
Type of PF instruments
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Sw itzerland
Academic
EU FP
Austria
Italy
Thematic national
Norw ay
Netherlands
France
Space (ESA + national programs)
Innovation
France w ith
CNRS
undivided
PF as % of BIP
0.6
1970
1980
1990
2002
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
Switzerland
Austria
Italy
Norway
Netherlands
France
From academic to thematic and back…
90.0
France 1990
80.0
France 1982
70.0
France 2002
Netherlands 1980
60.0
% Thematic
instruments
Italy 2002
Netherlands 2002
Switzerland 1990
50.0
Italy 1990
Netherlands 1990
Switzerland 1980
Switzerland 2002
40.0
Netherlands 1975
Austria 2002
Switzerland 1970
30.0
Italy 1980
Austria 1990
Austria 1980
20.0
10.0
Italy 1971
Austria 1970
0.0
0.0
10.0
20.0
30.0
40.0
50.0
% Academic (bottom-up) instruments
60.0
70.0
From steering to markets
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Today’s highly differentiated project funding system resembles
increasing to a market
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Where loosely coordinated agencies buy research services from
performers
With strong strategic behavior of applicants
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Depending on their strenghts, needs, etc.
Building stable market structures
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Needed to support long-term research, but also predictable
allocation of funding
Crucially based on shared representations on others actors
behaviour
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Of funding agencies
Of potential competitors
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Strong segmentation by domain/type of research/topic
Few key players with high success rates, many marginal players
Some evidence that core markets are relatively small-scale
CEEC project
 To analyse the changes in the organization of public
funding in CEEC
 Three countries as a test (Czech Republic, Estonia,
Poland)
 Look also for availability of data (including time
series)
 Approach
 Identify the main funding streams and to characterize
them
 Draw structural diagrams
 Understand the role of funding agencies and
allocation criteria
 See Karel’s presentation for more details on specific
results
Poland
MSHE
Institutional funding
24,19%
70,66%
30,81%
17,37%
Higher education
23,81%
22,48%
AS
Government units
7%
HEI
Institutes
13,20%
0,55%
0,49%
Institutes
3,35%
0,22%
0,17%
Institutes
5,2%
0,26%
0,68%
2,45%
project
funding
Pri
vat
e
1,46%
EU FP
1,57%
EU SF
MSHE fund
FPS
1,52%
0,60%
0.23%
Structural models
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A step towards identifying the main structural features of
national funding models
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Taking into account the interactions between modes and layers
(institutional complementarities)
Different models related to different national contexts
Which can be stable in an evolutionary perspective
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Ability of the State of steering the system
Levels of delegation
Performance vs. innovation
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Project-funding based
Centralised
Mixed models
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Characterize the models in terms of some key features
Three basic models seems to emerge:
The project-funding based model
 Most of research funding coming from highly
differentiated set of non coordnated agencies
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High share of project funding and low of core funding
 State « buys » research services from groups
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With limited attempt of central coordination
Mission agencies funding also basic research (DoD)
 Reliance on competition rather than on coordination to
get the required results
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stratified university system with concentration in a few
players
International excellence as the main criterion
 Limitations of this model when the system is too small
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Cumulative effects suppress diversity of the system (the
Estonian case)
The centralised model
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A single large research organisation funded by the state (outside the
university sector)
 The old CNRS model before joint laboratories
 The old system of Academy of Sciences in communist countries
 The today’s Polish system
The PRO has more functions than just funding
 Decision on priority areas
 Creation and restructuring of laboratories
 Mostly coopting scientists in the PRO board
A strongly centralised system
 Define priorities and concentrate effort
 Central planning, but with all its rigidities in face of new scientific
development
 Less adapted to new science dynamics more based on
complementarities than on heavvy investments (new « search
regimes »; Bonaccorsi)
The mixed model
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Some balance between core and project funding
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Say 60% to 40%
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Large university sector alongside a number of non-university
research institutes
A differentiated performers sector
Trying to achieve some balance between
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Targeting the best groups and spreading out resources (also
because of the link with education and regional development)
Differentiating the performers sectors to answer to different
missions vs. creating competition between performers
Typical of most Continental European countries including
Switzerland
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Best performing in small rich countries rather that on large
ones
Is the efficiency loss and the lack of central coordination
acceptable?
The Czech republic as a typical case
Conclusions (1)
 It is basically feasible to characterize
funding systems using existing data at
national level
 Mostly detailed budgetary data
 Complemented with data from agencies and
R&D statistics
 A very good knowledge of national systems
is required
 To identify and classify funding streams
 To identify the really relevant features
 National experts are required for these tasks
Conclusions (2)
 This works provides very interesting
insights on the structure of funding
systems
 Quantitative indicators are essential to
characterize them and to distinguish
variants
 The next avenue is to go towards data
on micro-structures of funding systems
References
(see www.enid-europe.org)
 Lepori B., van den Besselaar P., Dinges M., van der
Meulen B., Potì B., Reale E., Slipersaeter S., Theves J.,
(2007), Comparing the Evolution of National Research
Policies: what Patterns of Change?, Science and Public
Policy 34 (6), 372-388.
 Lepori B., Dinges M., Potì B., Reale E., Slipersaeter S.,
Theves J., van d. (2007). Indicators for Comparative
Analysis of Public Project Funding. Research
Evaluation, 16 (4), 243-255.
 Lepori B., Masso J., Jablecka J., Sima K., Ukrainski K.
(2008). Research funding system in Central and
Eastern European countries: a comparative analysis.
Paper presented at the ENID-PRIME Indicators
Conference, Olso, May 2008.