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science stretching from general to applied science and technology developaent. 

 This means that the production o£ Innovations or the discovery process 

 generally have an aspect of Interdependence that Is Ignored by the congruency 

 rule. Third, the timing of research expenditures needed for research 

 breakthroughs might be quite different for different Innovations. 



Priority setting schemes assume that research administrators or 

 government administrators are behaving as benevolent public servants In 

 the sense of trying to optimize some overall social objective. Frequently, 

 economists assume that for practical purposes, the objective can be reduced 

 to a social cost-benefit analysis of research projects. One useful summary 

 statistic from this process Is the marginal social rate of return on the 

 research projects. Projects that have the highest rates of return would be 

 given highest priority, and the available research budget exhausted on them. 



The primary reason social cost benefit analysis Is controversial Is that 

 there is not much evidence that research administrators or government officials 

 behave this way In making research funding decisions. This conclusion arises 

 from empirical evidence that competing Interest groups affect research 

 Investment decisions In ways that deviate greatly from those suggested by 

 socially efficient allocations. 



Priority setting at the national level for agricultural research raises 

 conflicts between exertion of useful "central leadership" and "decentralized" 

 control. As a result of some critical assessments of public agricultural 

 research, e.g., the Pound Report (1972), Wlnrock Report (1982), OTA Reports 

 (1981), the federal government has attempted to take greater responsibility 

 for "coordinating" U.S. public agricultural research. The most effective 

 mechanisms have been by altering the financial Incentives contained In federal 



