This study is significant in that it not only established the framework for analyzing the short-to-medium term and long-term economic effects of government’s R&D investment using macroeconometric models, but also allowed for short-term forecasting o...
This study is significant in that it not only established the framework for analyzing the short-to-medium term and long-term economic effects of government’s R&D investment using macroeconometric models, but also allowed for short-term forecasting of the effects of R&D investment for the purpose of forward-looking information. The macroeconomic equilibrium model focused on forecasting which provides for the 2013 outlook for R&D investment and analyzed the short-to-medium term macroeconomic effects of the government’s science and technology policy and its effects on R&D investment by industry. The CGE model was designed and analyzed in a way that allows for long-term simulation of the effects that the government’s science and technology policy on the macroeconomy. This study sought to utilize the strengths of macroeconometric models and CGE models in order to validate various implications and effect evaluation of Korea’s science and technology policy.
This study is differentiated against other studies and is meaningful given that the macroeconometric model reflects the strengths of a number of macroeconomic models representing Korea as much as possible while incorporating existing theoretical and empirical discussions on R&D investment, which has played a pivotal role in Korea’s transition into a knowledge=based economy. Furthermore, it made significant contributions to expanding the model into R&D investment by industry so that effects of R&D investment on specific industries could be analyzed.
The CGE model, based on the studies on characteristics of recent R&D investment functions, is an advanced model in terms of estimation of knowledge-based production functions and computable general equilibrium models. This model sought to minimize the error of overestimation observed in prior studies by adding investment related to R&D stock, intangible asset in social accounting matrices. The suggested model is valuable as it established the data framework that reflects R&D as a new capital account, and is a new and specialized CGE model for R&D that addressed weaknesses identified in existing CGE models for R&D. Furthermore, this model improved its reliability based on actual micro data, and production functions are estimated by directly using business-level micro data in order to overcome the limitations of existing parameters.
The model has significance since it fully reflected characteristics of macroeconomic effects of R&D investment unlike existing macroeconometric models and CGE models, but still has limitations in that it did not model science and technology policy tools such as the Technological Innovation Incentive Scheme. Moreover, studies on science and technology innovation has to address the need to understand the effects of the government policy from the perspective of innovation systems. While previous studies conducted empirical analysis of innovation systems focusing on the effects that the level of competition in the market, the flexibility of the labor market, and the efficiency of the financial market have on innovation and R&D investment, such analysis could not be integrated into the macroeconometric model. The model has another limitation of not considering negative macroeconomic effects of R&D investment such as redundancy effects. To reflect redundancy effects, a model will have to be constructed at a more micro level.