Beobachtung der technisch-wissenschaftlichen Entwicklung. Ergebnisse des dritten Technikreports

In order to elucidate the influence of government research policy on the development of science and technology, a broad overview over national R&D policies is given in the first part of the study: Based on OECD R&D statistics the USA, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the EC countries are characterized by their overall R&D expenditure, by the proportion of public to private funding and by government appropriations for socio-economic objectives. The second part of the study focusses on R&D policy in biotechnology. New trends within the publicly funded biotechnology research programmes in the USA Japan, France, Great Britain and the Republic of Korea are discribed and implications for Germany discussed. Despite its potential hazards biotechnology is regarded as a key technology and its development is publicly funded in the countries investigated. However, an international quantitative comparison of national R&D budgets for biotechnology is not possible to date due to the lack of comprehe nsive and coherent statistical data. Due to limited ressources the Korean government at present promotes biotechnology R&D only in certain niches while the other countries investigated the public funding covers the whole breadth of biotechnology. Especially in the USA and Japan emphasis is given to public funding of basic research. This tendency is consistent with the general observation that basic research is still crucial in more advanced stages of the development of science-based technologies. In each of the countries investigated several ministries or agencies are in charge of R&D in biotechnology. While their research policies were often poorly coordinated in the past a tendency towards better cooperation and coordination in biotechnology can now be observed in most countries. It is therefore concluded that the governments' role is being extended from pure funding of R&D and now also includes mediation between the different participants in the R&D process