기업의 R&D 구조변화와 정부정책 방향에 대한 소고

R&D expenditure of Korean firms has been increasing drastically since 1980 and occupied 84% of total R&D expenditure in 1994. After 1994, however, the growth rate of industry R&D expenditure has dropped below single digit. R&D concentration rate of upper 20 companies declined from 61.9% in 1999 to 49.8% in 2001. The technology trade balance has diverged by 2.8 billion dollars in 2000 compared to around 0.3 billion dollars in 1985. We find several reasons on declining the industry R&D growth rate in Korea. First, we carefully say there might be an crowding out effect in increasing government R&D investment from Granger causality test between industry R&D and government R&D. Second, the decreasing benefit of tax credit since 1992 on industry R&D expenditure has caused the decrease of industry R&D growth rate. Third, the type of R&D cost becomes to similar to matured countries type of cost, which means the portion of capital expenditure has been decreased since late of 1980s. Therefore, industry R&D growth rate gets to saturation point. We draw several policy implications from the changing structure of business R&D of Korean company. Firstly, to stimulate industry R&D investment Korean government needs to strengthen tax credit policy. Secondly, to induce foreign direct investment Korean government needs to establish technology infrastructures and high quality of manpower. To utilize foreign technology resources Korean government need to introduce global R&D program executed by foreign scientist as an Project Leader.