Evaluating public sector intramural research programmes: the case of the US Advanced Technology Program's Intramural Research Initiative

Within a public environment in which accountability is at the forefront, an important evaluation question is how to document the economic value of innovation-related outputs and outcomes from intramural research relative to the cost of funding an intramural research programme. In this paper, we apply a counterfactual method to an evaluation of the US Advanced Technology Program's (ATP) Intramural Research Initiative. We also suggest more general applications of the methodology -- for example, economic development applications to project evaluations in the developing areas of a country or in developing nations.