Experimental Technology Incentives

Little, Arthur D., Inc. "Federal Funding of Civilian Research and Development," Prepared for the Experimental Technology Incentives Program of the National Bureau of Standards, Washington, 1976. 

The Experimental Technology Incentives Program is now a portion of the Center for Field Methods at the National Bureau of Standards. It was instituted in 1972, when the science advisor articulated many of the same problems that we see being raised in the press today. The program has sought to understand the interaction between government policy and practice... 

The Bayh-Dole and Stevenson-Wydler acts of 1980 created new incentives for universities and federal laboratories to work with industry on R D and technology transfer. Stevenson-Wydler also authorized NSF s experimental program in University-Industry Cooperative Research Centers and gave the Department of Commerce the authority (never exercised) to fund Cooperative Technology Centers to help industry with research. The National Cooperative Research Act of 1984 provided a safe haven for industrial research consortia to help them avoid challenge under the antitrust statutes. 

Performance El provides greater incentives than CAC for continuing innovation over time in many, but not all, cases studied. For example, the Swedish nitrogen oxides (NOJ tax induced experimentation in boiler operations that led to substantial reductions in NOx emissions. Because NO, emissions from boilers are idiosyncratic, it was unknown beforehand what would work in each boiler. Achieving these reductions from CAC would therefore have been impossible. Similarly, the U.S. SOj trading policy induced many nonpatentable boiler-specific innovations on utility boilers. Elsewhere, the Netherlands became a world leader in water purification technologies and its industries adopted more advanced, process-integrated measures to reduce pollutants. 

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