Efficiency of Government-Sponsored R&D Projects: A Metafrontier DEA Approach

Abstract

Government R&D investments are steadily increasing with the perception that R&D plays an important role in technological innovation and sustainable economic growth. In particular, because biotechnology is recognized as one of the next growth engines, the Korean government has recently increased their investment in biotechnology R&D. However, careful analysis of the efficiency of government-sponsored R&D projects is still lacking. In this paper, we measured the technical efficiency and technology gap ratio to investigate the efficiency of Korean government-sponsored R&D projects of 16 sub-biotechnologies from 2007 to 2013 using a metafrontier Data Envelopment Analysis approach. There was no improvement in overall efficiency between 2007 and 2013. Biochip development technology has been the most efficient sub-biotechnology field and the least efficient fields have been biotechnology product safety and efficacy assessment technology. Medical science and engineering is the closest to optimal production technology among sub-biotechnologies. The efficiency of universities and government-funded research institutes is high, while the efficiency of companies is relatively low. The results suggest that the government should improve the R&D planning process and establish a customized R&D investment strategy that considers the characteristics of technologies and the seven organization types of R&D conductors to increase R&D efficiency.

The Impact of Government Competition on Regional R&D Efficiency: Does Legal Environment Matter in China’s Innovation System?

“…LISA is Products of decomposition of Moran's I and can help to evaluate the clustering patterns and calculate local Moran's I for each spatial unit. The spatial autocorrelation of Moran's I can be expressed as Equation (1).…”

“…Government investment in R&D is an important factor in technological innovation [1]. China has been the second biggest country in R&D investment in the world, with its R&D expenditure has already reached 131.56 billion yuan.…”

“…First, we apply the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a typical efficiency analysis methodology to estimate R&D efficiency. DEA does not need to explicitly assume a functional relationship between inputs and outputs and has advantages in dealing with multiple inputs and outputs [1]. We measure the efficiency level of 30 provinces in China, assumed decision-making units (DMUs).…”

The Perception of Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Regulation and Innovation Efficiency in the Construction Industry: Evidence from South Korea

“…Kruskal-Wallis one-way ANOVA is a nonparametric technique for measuring significant differences in continuous variables among three or more groups, which is suitable for measuring differences in efficiency scores evaluated with DEA [57]. [46,48]. This is because innovative activities are complex and multidimen-sional processes consisting of interactions between various inputs and outputs.…”

“…This is because innovative activities are complex and multidimen-sional processes consisting of interactions between various inputs and outputs. Therefore, the ability to innovate cannot be measured on a single-dimensional scale [46][47][48][52][53][54][55]. In this work, the innovation efficiencies of companies in the construction industry were evaluated by adopting an input-oriented BCC DEA model proposed by Banker et al [56].…”