Working Paper Cnr-Ceris, N° 07/2011 

FINANZIAMENTI ESTERNI E PRODUTTIVITÀ TOTALE DEI FATTORI NEL SETTORE DELLA RICERCA: IL CASO DEL CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE
[Scientific productivity and external funding, the case of CNR institutes]

Alessandro Manello
Università di Bergamo
Cnr-Ceris
Ceris - Institute for Economic Research
on Firms and Growth
Collegio Carlo Alberto
Via Real Collegio, 30
10024 Moncalieri (To)
Tel. 011-6824946
Cell. 348-7340890
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ABSTRACT: The recent reform of the Italian CNR has increased the focus on external collaboration and decreased the amount of government funds. That process bring research institutes to operate on the market in order to obtain the necessary resources, but causes also a re-allocation of efforts among different research products. This paper present an application of the Directional Distance Function (DDF) model to build productivity indicators able to consider two different kinds of scientific outputs: someone more important than others from a scientific view point. Financial constraints do not allow institutes to freely dispose of their output portfolio and less important outputs have to be produced in order to obtain external funds. In a regime of limited human and temporal resources a substitution process cannot be avoided, then a cost in term of desirable scientific outputs is imposed. An estimate of that opportunity cost is here proposed, also with a comparison of standard efficiency measures.
An evidence of the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) trend during the 2004-2007 period is provided by applying Malmquist-Luenberger indexes and standard indicators. From a comparison of the two set of results some different conclusions on the 2003 Reform can be drawn.

Keywords: Directional Distance Function, Scientific Productivity, Malmquist-Luenberger
indexes, TFP growth

JEL Codes: I23, D24

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