Government Funded Projects and Joint R&D Case Study of Pharmaceuticals Agency Funded Projects
Yosuke Okada, Chief Researcher, Pharmaceuticals and Industrial Policy Research Institute
Takahito Kushi, Senior Researcher, Pharmaceuticals and Industrial Policy Research Institute
(No.16: Published in February 2004)
This paper examines how the project scheme, organizational form, governance, and the nature of joint research have affected the results of the project and the R&D activities of the sponsor companies, based on a questionnaire survey conducted independently by the MHLW. According to our empirical analysis based on the questionnaire survey and related data such as R&D expenditures and patents, the factors that affect the results of the funded projects are the ratio of government investment and the number of employees dispatched by the funded company to the total employees of the operating company, i.e., the level of commitment by the government and the funded company, The survey also revealed that the number of patent applications filed by the funded companies and the evaluation indicators of the companies obtained from the questionnaire survey had a significant impact on the R&D investment of the funded companies and the number of patent applications filed by the funded companies. In the case of the JNIH-funded projects, only a minority of the funded companies intended to save on R&D expenses, but rather many companies increased their R&D investment due to government support, indicating that the effect of commitment to R&D was significant. However, the impact of the government-sponsored projects on the R&D investment of the sponsoring firms themselves was insignificant, and the government-sponsored ratio had a negative impact on patent applications by the operating firms. This is presumably due to the fact that a high ratio of government investment makes it difficult for the research results to be made proprietary. This is because once a patent is granted to a company, the government is expected to make the research results widely available to the public. In addition, the evaluation of the operating companies by the government-sponsored companies based on the questionnaire had a positive correlation with the ratio of government investment and the ratio of dispatched employees. This suggests that the funded firms' evaluations were higher for joint research in which either the government or the funded firms had a strong commitment.