Incorporating Ex-Ante Risk in Evaluating Public R&D Programs: A Counterfactual Analysis of the Korean Case

R&D is inherently an uncertain endeavor, yet now more than ever those performing R&D with public funding are called upon to clarify the utility of their research. Calls for public accountability are mounting with the increase in constraints on government budgets due to the recent worldwide economic recession, in response to which both policymakers and researchers pay much more attention to rigorously assessing publicly funded R&D. A key issue complicating R&D evaluation in these circumstances is how to adequately account for the nature and degree of risk involved in a given R&D program or project. This study deliberates on certain issues involving the measurement of ex-ante risk in public R&D evaluation: (i) information asymmetry between R&D sponsors and performers, (ii) ambiguity in the measurement of returns in both prospective and retrospective evaluation, and (iii) the dilemma between measurement error and omitted variable bias for empirical estimation of R&D performance. The study then presents an analysis of hypothetical evaluation results that apply risk-relevant weights to the annual evaluation outcomes of South Korea's national R&D programs funded during 2006~2012. In this counterfactual re-evaluation of public R&D program performance, high-risk R&D programs turn out to receive higher evaluation than non-high-risk programs. The current study suggests that R&D evaluation ignoring ex-ante risk is not only conceptually invalid since R&D activities are intrinsically uncertain endeavors, but unfair as R&D performers are asked to be accountable for the results that were in fact out of their reach.