
Abstract. The authors analyze the role of national science foundations in providing support for basic science. A brief overview of history of this particular type of foundations shows that their main exemplar is the U. S. National Science Foundation. While implementing this paradigm foundations tend to reproduce typical traits of science organization models specific to their home country. By comparing the situations in seven leading world economies – USA, China, Japan, Germany, UK, France and Russia the authors conclude that the main factors affecting particular foundation’s position are the amount of basic research expenditure and the capacity of the higher education sector in the country’s research system. USA and UK stay at the top of the ranking ordered in accordance with these factors, China and Russia occupy the lower places. Accordingly, the foundations in the former two countries possess the largest shares of research expenditure, while in all other countries under examination their share is lower. The authors accentuate the fact that Russia shows the lowest figure. Given that the Russian government has announced the policy to increase the role of universities in the national research system there is an obvious necessity to increase the respective share. The next discussed problem is whether the current level of basic research funding indicates a need to increase the amount of the foundation’s funding. It is a more complicated one due to the difficulty in finding an optimal amount of basic research funding. The authors attempt to apply an approach which takes account of the following indicators correlating with basic research: human capital, size of internal market, relative size of high-tech industry, openness of the economy, nearness to the technological frontier. The comparison of the combination of these indicators in Russia and in the six largest economies shows that an increase in the funding for basic science remains desirable.
Keywords: national science foundations, science policy, economy of science, funding of basic research
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