R&D, Innovative Collaborations and the Role of Public Policies

R&D investments have the potential to boost innovation at the local level. However, this only happens where appropriate complementary skills and conditions are available locally to support knowledge generation and absorption. Where major R&D facilities are located in regions that lack the appropriate receptive environment the local mismatch between R&D and skilled labor can persistently hinder innovation and local spillovers. How can this be avoided? Public policies have an important role to play. They should facilitate the development of connections between local teams and those active in the research facility. The presence of star researchers in large research facilities might—for example—be a key factor to facilitate collaboration with local industrial partners offering significant opportunities for technological upgrading.

Fundamental Science Drives Innovation

The question on the value of public investment in Big Science seems to return following a period of economic slow-down and turmoil in Europe and around the world. This essay shows that investment in fundamental research has a strong social impact—extending beyond the key scientific questions the research tries to answer—and can offer a tool for economic recovery. In addition it highlights that public investment in curiosity-driven research also provides an important stimulus for innovation as R&D companies tend to concentrate around vibrant scientific communities that provide much-needed talent. By renewing and strengthening investment in basic science, the way to an even brighter future can be paved. This should not be a question for different scientific communities, but a clear target for all stakeholders and decision makers.

Findings from the LHC/HL-LHC Programme

This note summarizes the results of a social Cost–Benefit Analysis (CBA) of the High Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). The social CBA methodology is well-suited to assess social costs and benefits of the HL-LHC up to 2038. The analysis shows that the ratio between incremental benefits and incremental costs of the HL-LHC with respect to operating the LHC under normal consolidation (i.e. without high-luminosity upgrade) is slightly over 1.7, meaning that each Swiss Franc invested in the HL-LHC upgrade project pays back approximately 1.7 CHF in societal benefits. The rest of the note is organized as follows. We first discuss the merits of CBA; next, we present the methodology and discuss the results.

Leveraging the Economic Potential of FCC’s Technologies and Processes

An international consortium of more than 150 organizations worldwide is studying the feasibility of various future particle colliders to expand our understanding of the inner workings of the Universe. At the core of the Future Circular Collider (FCC) study is the design of a 100 km long circular particle collider infrastructure that could extend CERN’s current accelerator complex with an integral research program that spans 70 years. The first step would be an intensity-frontier electron-positron collider allowing to study with precision the Higgs couplings with many of the Standard Model particles and search with high-precision for new physics while the ultimate goal is to build a proton collider with a c.m.s collision energy seven times larger than the Large Hadron Collider. Hosted in the same tunnel and profiting from the new infrastructure, FCC-hh would allow to explore a new energy regime where new physics may be at play.

Large-Scale Investment in Science: Economic Impact and Social Justice

Science is not a free lunch. Worldwide, R&D expenditures per year, from basic research to product development by firms, are about USD1.7 trillion (according to UNESCO estimates for 2017). There are perhaps 7.8 million professional researchers globally, around one researcher out of one thousand inhabitants of the planet. In the OECD area, which includes the most developed economies, government R&D spending is worth about USD 315 billion per year and the share of government of the total R&D expenditures is 28%. Hence, citizens support research in two ways: firstly, as consumers by paying a price for goods and services which in turn include in their production costs such expenditures; secondly, by paying taxes which support government R&D expenditures, mostly for basic science. In this short essay, I discuss two questions: What is the economic impact of basic research? What are the implications for social justice of the interplay between -on one side- government funded science and -on the other side- R&D supported by business? I will argue that the ultimate economic impact of large-scale investment in basic research is often (but not always) positive (i.e. benefits are greater than costs). There is, however, a potential concern for social justice arising from the private appropriation by business of rents arising from knowledge as a public good.

Investing in Fundamental Research: Evaluation of the Benefits that the UK Has Derived from CERN

Investing in fundamental research enables us to push the frontiers of knowledge. However, since we don’t have access to unlimited resources we have to make choices about which areas to invest in. It is often easier to place a value on the costs of an investment than the benefits. Often, the benefits of funding a piece of research cannot be known in advance of making the investment, plus it may take many years for those benefits to be realised. Even in cases where we are looking back—trying to place a value on a past or ongoing investment in research—it is not always straightforward to identify, attribute and quantify the benefits and it is typically harder still to place a monetary value upon them.

Introduction

The present volume collects the proceedings of the workshop “The Economics of Science” that was held in June 2019 in Brussels in the framework of the FCC Week with the support of the H2020 EuroCirCol and EASITrain projects and the Belgium Charter of the LSE Alumni Association. The goal of the meeting was threefold: First to explore the role of public investments in research infrastructures and Big Science projects for economic development, review ways to access their financial impact beyond their core scientific mission and thirdly create a forum for exchanging best practices that can maximize the impact of such projects. The collected essays focus on Big Science Organizations that participated in the workshop while we should clarify to readers that by “Science” we mainly refer to curiosity-driven research. However, we hope that some of the ideas and tools discussed by the participants of the workshop can find applications in many ways.

Investing in Fundamental Research: For Whom? A Philosopher’s Perspective

In this short piece arising from panel discussion at the 2019 FCC Week Conference in Brussels, I briefly review some of the challenges facing large-scale investments in science and the philosophical question that looms large: why care about investing in fundamental research?

Epilogue: Productive Collisions—Blue-Sky Science and Today’s Innovations

The London School of Economics (LSE) joins CERN as an established partner of the Future Circular Collider (FCC) Study, a project that touches many fields in and beyond physics. This volume coincides with the first steps of Horizon Europe in hopes of informing research and innovation planning. The challenges and scepticism facing Big Science were discussed but, despite them, we stand firm in support of the society-wide benefit of scientific projects of such magnitude. In concluding this volume, this article sums these perspectives, drawn from the joint CERN-LSE Alumni Association Belgium workshop held in 2019. Earlier, wider and greater benefits flow from Big, multi-disciplinary Science. These benefits are greatest when the core project is developed in open interaction with youth, local and global communities, engaging ecosystems capable of nurturing early spin-off innovation.

Designing a Socio-Economic Impact Framework for Research Infrastructures: Preliminary Lessons from the RI-PATHS Project

The Horizon 2020 funded RI-PATHS project aims at providing policy makers, funders and Research Infrastructure (RI) managers the tools to assess the impact on the RI on the economy and their contribution to resolving societal challenges, etc. The goal is to improve the understanding of the long-term impact pathways of the various types of RIs operating in Europe, and, indeed, internationally. In the following we briefly summarise the work carried out by the RI-PATHS consortium partners to mid-2019 and derive useful lessons for future work.