Efficiency Evaluation of Basic Research in China

Following the increasing investment on basic research in China, the outputs of basic research have been greatly enhanced. In this paper, the relative efficiency of investments in basic research is analyzed by adopting statistical regressions and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method. Preliminary results show that injected investment seems to be the main driving force for the increased basic research outputs in China. It is found that there were significant improvements on overall efficiency from 1991 to 1996, although this trend has noticeably slowed down since 1996. Possible causes of this slow-down are discussed