Skip to content

National Bureau of Economic Research

Admin

Pop-Up Journal on the Returns to R&D

Organising and synthesising the evidence on the social return to research and development

Unstyled placeholder. The public design is being produced by eLife Pathways. This page exists only to show the content coming out of the admin area. Go to the admin area.

Expert estimates

How estimates of the social return to R&D have moved as evidence accumulated. Charts are embedded from NBER's Datawrapper account by ID. The figures behind them are held as records, so the distribution can be cited and compared year to year independently of the charting tool.

No chart connected yet

This is where the Datawrapper chart renders. Paste a chart ID from NBER's Datawrapper account into the Visualisations record and it appears here, on this page and on the public dashboard, with no developer involvement.

current value: PLACEHOLDER

Replace the chart ID in the admin area with one from NBER's own Datawrapper account to render the real visualisation here. Download the underlying data

Published estimates (4)

The accessible table equivalent of the chart above, and the record set behind it.

Published estimates of the social return to R&D
EstimateBasisYearValue
Griliches, hybrid cornGriliches (1958)public R&D19587
Mansfield et al., industrial innovationsMansfield et al. (1977)private R&D197756%
Jones & Summers, aggregate innovation investmentJones & Summers (2022), NBER WP 27863total R&D202212range 5 to 20
Fieldhouse & Mertens, nondefense public R&DFieldhouse & Mertens (2025), NBER WP 33780public R&D2025175%range 140 to 210

Figures are drawn from the published literature for demonstration and are approximate. Methods differ between studies and the numbers are not directly comparable.