A previous article in this newsletter (issue 3, December 2012) demonstrated how selected Asian governments have come to view science as integral to economic growth, and have consequently taken steps to develop their science infrastructures. This holds most for China, but is also true for Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. The rise of new emerging science powerhouses in Asia provokes the question of what the impact will be on science. In particular, does a shift of scientific power to Asia mean that the flows of scientific talent from east to west will dry up, and are Asian scientific centres new cooperation partners in science for the west? Read more
Bruegel blog
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The implications of Asia’s scientific rise
25th February 2013
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The world innovation landscape: Asia rising?
5th February 2013
Global growth in research and development has been vigorous, with both public and private R&D investment increasing and growing more rapidly outside the previously dominant centres of North America, Europe and Japan. The counties with the largest R&D spends are the US, the UK, France, Germany, Japan, China and South Korea. These seven countries account for about 71 percent of worldwide R&D expenditure. Read more
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ERC: indispensable for frontier research in Europe
9th January 2013
2012 was the year that the European Research Council (ERC) celebrated its 5th birthday. Although 5 years is still short for a sound evaluation of enduring effects, it is a good time to assess whether the ERC is set on the right track to deliver on its mission. Read more
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The rise of Asia in science
25th October 2012
The shifting geography of scientific output The US has been the world’s largest producer of scientific knowledge for decades, as measured by number of scientific publications in internationally peer reviewed journals[1]. Since 1994, however, EU countries considered as an integrated area, have outperformed the US in terms of number of publications. Now both the US and the EU (as well as Japan) are losing share relative to Asia, and particularly to China (Table 1). The annual average growth rate for Chinese scientific publications from 1995-2009 is 15 percent. China only represented 2 percent of scientific publishing in 1995, but by 2009 accounted for about 9 percent of world scientific output. Although the most spectacular and consistent over time, China is… Read more
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Are new ICT sectors a platform for European growth?
1st October 2012
Compared to the United States, Europe has a less efficient ICT growth model: the EU’s economy specialises less in ICT sectors, ICT contributes less to growth in the EU, and the EU is lagging in terms of private expenditures for research and development into ICT goods and services. The EU fails to focus on the new ICT sub-sectors and firms which have the greatest potential for ICT-based growth, most notably internet and software. In particular, Europe lacks young leading innovators in these areas that could compete with corporations like Google, Apple, Amazon and Qualcomm in the US. Europe’s failure to redirect towards new ICT firms and new ICT sectors is likely to matter for Europe’s post-crisis recovery dynamics. In the… Read more
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Dedicated to tackling climate change?
29th October 2010
Our response to climate change probably the most pressing policy challenge we face needs to be speedy and global in scale. The EU needs to take an approach that is more concerted and broader than at present and, to achieve that, it needs a commissioner dedicated to the task. That approach should be pro-innovation. To keep the costs of adaptation and mitigation ‘manageable', we will need a portfolio of technologies. That will require us, firstly, to increase use of technologies that are already commercially viable; secondly, to scale up technologies that are near commercial viability; and, thirdly, to dedicate resources for fundamental and applied research in order to develop breakthrough, green technologies. To switch on the private-sector innovation machine, government… Read more
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Kick-Starting the Green Innovation Machine
9th December 2009
Senior Fellows Philippe Aghion and Reinhilde Veugelers, with Harvard researcher David Hemous, write about the need for government subsidies in encouraging 'green innovation' in an op-ed for Vox, the widely-read web portal for European economic policy research. Another, less data-focused version was also published in German business newspaper Handelsblatt (10 Dec). Both pieces was based off the authors' Policy Brief, "No Green Growth Without Innovation". Click here to download this comment. Read more