Science and R&D

The Case for Improving America’s Research and Experimentation Tax Credit
As recently as the mid-1990s, the United States maintained the most generous R&D tax incentive in the world. As scholarly studies have shown, that helped America stay ahead of its competitors by boosting R&D investment, innovation, jobs, and GDP growth. Fast forward to today, and it’s a very different picture.
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Science and R&D
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January 6, 2020
Fact of the Week: Switzerland Increased its Public R&D Investment by 79 Percent Between 2008 and 2016, Nearly 4 Times More Than the United States
The has been a growing disparity across the globe between the governments that are choosing to prioritize innovation and those that aren’t. Recent analysis reflects this, comparing the growth of public R&D funding between 2008 and 2016 across eight major countries.
December 11, 2019
Spreading Tech Hubs to More of America: A Proposal
ITIF and the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program presented a proposal for a national competition to select metropolitan areas to receive a decade-long range of robust policy supports, enabling their transition into self-sustaining, globally competitive innovation hubs.
December 9, 2019
Fact of the Week: A 10 Percent Increase in Public Investment in Defense R&D Increases Private R&D Investment by 4.3 Percent
Defense spending is the main source of public R&D investment in the United States, totaling $78 billion in 2016. A new study examines the impacts of defense R&D investment by leveraging the dramatic increases in defense R&D investment across the OECD in the years following 2001.
December 9, 2019
The Case for Growth Centers: How to Spread Tech Innovation Across America
The federal government should take aggressive steps to spur the development of more tech hubs in America’s heartland by identifying promising metro areas and helping them transform into self-sustaining innovation centers.
November 4, 2019
Fact of the Week: Large, Profitable Firms in France Receive Tax Subsidies of 43 Percent on R&D They Perform, Which is More Than 8 Times Greater Than U.S. Subsidies
R&D tax incentives are key to fostering innovation, effectively providing needed public support for research without sacrificing private-sector market incentives. According to a new report by the OECD, the United States is well behind much of the rest of the world in this respect.
October 23, 2019
To Understand Chinese Innovation Success, Look No Further Than Government R&D Subsidies
Nearly 25 percent of all R&D expenditures in China come in the form of government subsidies to firms. It would be ideal if China dramatically reduced these innovation subsidies so American workers in innovation industries would face a level playing field, but the chances of that happening are slim to none. It is time for the federal government to step up its game and provide significantly more support for industrial R&D.
October 21, 2019
U.S. Funding for University Research Continues to Slide
The United States continues to fall further behind world leaders in funding for university research. To reverse course, it should increase support by $45 billion per year and provide stronger incentives for businesses to increase their investments.
October 18, 2019
Comments to OSTP on the Bioeconomy
ITIF filed comments responding to the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s request for information on the bioeconomy.
October 15, 2019
Fact of the Week: U.S.-Based Scientists Have Published 44 Percent of Recent AI-Related Scientific Articles but Have Been Awarded Only 20 Percent of AI-Related International Patents
Innovation can be approximated across many different metrics, which can present very different impressions of where new technologies are being created and utilized. In a new report, the OECD has analyzed the 2,000 companies that invest the most in R&D for their output related to artificial intelligence.
September 30, 2019
Fact of the Week: Companies 10 Years Ahead of the Curve Advertising Job Openings With New Titles Invest 63 Percent More of Their Revenue Into R&D
As technology changes the nature of jobs, the language we use to describe them changes too. A new study makes use of this phenomenon to analyze a database of 5 million job advertisements that appeared in newspapers from 1940 to 2000, calculating when a job title first came into use.

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