Abstract
This chapter focuses on the measurement of geographic concentration of federal funding for academic research. Besides conventional descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation, a concentration index is introduced to describe the extent of concentration of academic research funding from several federal agencies. The chapter also discusses the underlying causes and major ramifications of geographic concentration of federal funding for academic research.
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Notes
- 1.
I use the total federal support of academic R&D in 50 states rather than in the entire U.S. as the denominator in the calculation of a state’s share of federal support. The two share measures only differ slightly. I make this choice to ensure that the concentration index is exactly 1 in the scenario of maximum degree of concentration.
- 2.
The eight agencies include DOD, DOE, NIH, NSF, Department of Agriculture (DOA), Department of Commerce (DOC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). They are selected because they are major federal R&D agencies.
- 3.
In 2015, California received 14.2% of total federal support of academic R&D, and the sum of the funding received by the bottom ten states was about 1.8%. A 10% loss of California’s funding is roughly equivalent to about 80% increase of the total federal academic R&D funding won by the bottom ten states.
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Wu, Y. (2020). Geographical Concentration of Funding of Academic Research. In: America's Leaning Ivory Tower. SpringerBriefs in Political Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18704-0_2
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