Priority-Setting and Economic Payoffs in Basic Research: An American Perspective

During the past several years, budgetary problems and increased attention to the problem of improving US economic competitiveness have led to pressures to change the system through which priorities for federal funding of basic research are set. A number of reports and policy statements have challenged the long-accepted practice of allowing priorities among disciplines and board areas of research to be set in a decentralised manner in which political factors predominate and groups of scientists in different fields advocate their interests more or less independently of one another. The challenge to policymakers and the scientific community is to learn how to allocate resources in a manner that improves economic performance without restricting the freedom of individual scientists to set their own research directions. This paper reviews the central elements of the debate over priority-setting and the contribution of basic research to economic competitiveness in the United States, discusses lessons that have been learned, and considers how the issues might eventually be resolved.