Suchergebnisse

BECAUSE FAILURE IS OFTEN MORE SEVERALY PENALIZED THAN SUCCESS IS WELL REWARDED, MANY PUBLIC SECTOR DECISION MAKERS MAY TEND TO AVOID RISK. ON THE OTHER HAND, TIES BETWEEN OUTCOMES AND SANCTIONS MAY INCREASE THE IMPORTANCE OF DECISION CRITERIA RELATED TO SELF-INTEREST RELATIVE TO EFFICIENCE - AND LEAD TO THE ADOPTION OF TECHNOLOGIES NOT WARRANTED UNDER EFFICIENCY CRITERIA.

Evaluation of state-sponsored research and development programs started in the 1980s. Examples include New Jersey's Advanced Technology Centers and Pennsylvania's Ben Franklin Partnership program.

Although often viewed as a premature and difficult activity, evaluation of state advanced technology programs has commenced in response to annual state budget reviews. Three issues related to evaluation of state advanced technology programs are examined here: (1) the political and institutional context within which evaluation is being performed; (2) technical issues concerning the specification of outcomes, reliance on process indicators such as leveraging ratios, and dependence on self-reported assessments for outcome measures; and (3) the limits to program evaluation as a guide to policymaking. The diffusion of specific evaluation approaches may be exerting an independent influence on programmatic characteristics of other states, shaping both the relative emphasis accorded different objectives and the choice of evaluation techniques.

The social knowledge system (Holzner et al., this volume) offers perspectives not found in most economic approaches to science and technology. Although little of the content of the social knowledge system is found in mainstream neoclassical microeconomics, the social knowledge system has closer intellectual ties to the emerging economics of institutional innovation, including the growing emphasis on university-industry-government partnerships in the performance of various knowledge functions. The knowledge systems accounting scheme augments the way economists working in different traditions conceptualize and describe processes of R&D, helping both to enlarge the scope and relevance of conventional science indicators and to create new indicators, which may account for such impact-mediating structures as university-industry-government partnerships.