The Decline in Corporate Research: Should We Worry? | Policy Options & Trade-offs
The Center for Innovation Policy's conference, "The Decline in Corporate Research: Should We Worry?", was held on March 31, 2017, at Duke's "Duke in D.C." offices.
Panel 5: Policy Options and Trade-offs
Moderator: James Turner, former Counsel, House Science Committee
Discussants: 1. Increasing and rebalancing the public research portfolios
Stephen Merrill, Duke Law School
2. Tax Policy
Eric Toder, Urban Institute Tax Policy Center
3. Antitrust
Howard Shelanski, Georgetown University Law Center
Michael Katz, UC Berkeley
4. Intellectual property
Arti Rai, Duke Law School
Government data and research point to a long decline in US corporate investment in upstream research. How pervasive is this trend across industries, technologies, and firms of different sizes? How does it compare with research spending by the federal government, universities, and companies abroad? Does it reflect less reliance on research, whoever performs it? Is it explained by capital market pressures, global competition, or other factors? Has it contributed to the slowdown in productivity growth? Are there other reasons policymakers should be concerned? If so, what policy levers should they look to—e.g., intellectual property, tax, government R&D spending, or antitrust enforcement?
This program was sponsored by a grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.