THE CHANGING ROLE OF GOVERNMENT LABS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY

This paper discusses the role of government and government labs in the innovation system by looking at the content and context in which this role changed in industrialized countries in the past 40 years. The paper concludes that even though we observe a decreasing trend in the share of government performed R&D in all industrial countries, there is still a substantial role for government labs to play. Also, better measurement mechanisms should be designed to evaluate the effectiveness of science and technology (S&T) in government and higher education as main public S&T institutions.