This paper was prepared for the Department, by Mark Matthews and John Howard of Howard Partners, as part of a series of occasional papers on issues relating to emerging industries and technologies. The report examines how R&D and innovation support is deployed across industries; research fields and technologies; and across socio-economic objectives. It also examines the implications for emerging areas of economic activity. The analysis is based on Commonwealth support for research and development in the 1996-97 income year. The report was released in February 2000.
The study highlighted how the programs avilable in 1996-7 to deliver Commonwealth support for R&D, tended to disperse R&D support in small amounts across a wide range of socioeconomic objectives and fields of research. The study concluded that from a policy perspective, the allocation of the Commonwealth's R&D support might be too thinly spread to achieve sufficient economies of scale to commercialise research. However the R&D Tax concession stood out in that it facilitated large scale experimental development and helped counteract the dispersion of R&D investment.
The study also found that the emerging industries analysed were tending to exhibit greater private sector R&D investment than Commonwealth R&D investment and that the R&D Tax Concession could be expected to become increasingly important in facilitating R&D in emerging industries.