The Impact and Organization of Publicly-Funded Research and Development in the European Community

This paper examines R&D activities in the European Community using the Community R&D Information Service (CORDIS) databases. We find that a country's private companies tend to be specialized in the same scientific fields as its universities and public organizations. In addition, we construct indicators of the degree of R&D tacitness and find that greater expected ability to communicate research outcomes encourages less centralized R&D programs. Programs that yield tangible results are less geographically and administratively centralized. The more that research leads to codifiable knowledge, the less centralized R&D activity needs to be.