Abstract:

The main purpose of basic research is to expand the knowledge frontier, so basic research is usually defined as the curiosity-driven research in terms of motivation. However, government and society want that basic research contributes more than knowledge creation like training researchers, producing economic outcome and so on.

Basic research is also regarded as public goods, so governments have the responsibility of investing basic research as much as it could achieve social optimization. Nowadays government budget deficit is big issue over the world. This means that effective R&D investment portfolio is very important.

To preserve the nation’s basic research capacity continuously, government needs to consider various aspects of basic research from knowledge production to economic outcome, and from supporting already proofed superior researchers to raising up promising researchers.

This article used AHP(Analytic Hierarchy Process) methods in order to construct the basic research portfolio of Korean government.
In AHP the purpose of basic research is categorized into three parts like knowledge creation, socio-economic impact and human resource improvement. Moreover each main purpose consist of two lower criteria. For example human resource improvement has next generation researcher training and present generation researcher training. Knowledge creation has knowledge diversity and knowledge excellence, and socio-economic impact has economic value production and public or social problem solving. The AHP test was done by 20 people. They were scientists, science policy experts, public officers and science journalists.

Time horizon was set in two term view. One was short-term view(after 5 years) and the other was middle-term view(after 10 to 15 years).
Alternatives consist of 4 research types. They are small grass-root research, advanced research, strategic research and COE(center of research excellence).

AHP result showed the sequence of criteria. Korean basic research was needed to put more weight on knowledge creation and human resource improvement than socio-economic impact. In the knowledge creation knowledge excellence has higher score than knowledge diversity in short-term view. This means that more funding on knowledge excellence program is important than knowledge diversity in order to create knowledge in short-term. However, in middle-term view the result is opposite. In regard to human resource improvement, investing on the next generation researchers training is more weighted than the present generation researcher training.
In research portfolio among alternatives, in short-term view the advanced research is ranked higher than the small grass-root research, however, in long-term view the latter is ranked higher than the former.

This article has some significant meanings. At first this was first trial to construct the Korean basic research portfolio using AHP methods. This is the first time to set the criteria like knowledge creation, socio-economic impact and human resource improvement, and each main purpose consist of two lower criteria.

Secondly, this article shows time horizon is significant factor to influence on the basic research portfolio. Beside of determining proper criteria and alternatives, it is very important to set appropriate time horizon.

Thirdly, AHP results was applied to actual Korean government portfolio. This made the example of how the academic analytical methods could be useful in public policy.

Keywords:

Basic research, government investment, human resource, knowledge creation, AHP methods, investment portfolio.