Technology, R&D, Industrial, and Science Policies: Private and Public Sector Interactions That Encourage Technological Advance

This paper distinguishes four types of public policies that seek to encourage growth-inducing technological advance: technology, R&D, industrial, and science policies. The first three are typically treated under the single heading ‘industrial policy’, which is a source of confusion since each is administered by different agents and often with different objectives. Evidence of successes and failures of any one of the policies defined here is often incorrectly taken to apply to the other policies. Evidence for the symbiotic relation between the public and the private sectors is outlined, although typically ignored by in formal growth theories. The massive influence of science policy on economic growth, also typically ignored by in growth theories, is a largely unintended byproduct of scientific advance. A policy implication of the approach in this paper is to stress science, technology, and R&D policies, putting much less stress on industrial policy as defined here.