Abstract
This paper is a review of recent trends in United States expenditures on research and development (R&D). Real expenditures by both the government and the private sector increased rapidly between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s, and have since leveled off. This is true of both overall expenditures and expenditures on basic research, as well as funding of academic research. Preliminary estimates indicate that about $170 billion was spent on R&D in the United States in 1995, with ≈60% of that funding coming from the private sector and about 35% from the federal government. In comparison to other countries, we have historically spent more on R&D relative to our economy than other advanced economies, but this advantage appears to be disappearing. If defense-related R&D is excluded, our expenditures relative to the size of the economy are considerably smaller than those of other similar economies.
This paper is an overview of historic trends and current patterns of research and development (R&D) activity in the United States. Most of the information contained herein comes from the National Science Foundation (NSF) (1). (I am indebted to Alan Rappaport and John Jankowski of NSF for sharing with me preliminary, unpublished statistics from the 1996 edition of Science and Engineering Indicators, which had not been released when this paper was prepared.) The background is divided into three sections: (i) overall spending; (ii) basic and academic research; and (iii) international comparisons.