In this chapter we present figures for economic research11 based on the official Norwegian statistics on expenditures for such research. Expenditures over time, by funding sources and kind of institutions are presented. Some comparisons with expenditures within other social science disciplines are also included. As official statistics split on disciplines do not include the research institutes, most tables only include economics in the higher education institutions (for the research institutes only statistics on research expenditures in general is available).
Table 3.1 shows the economics R&D expenditure in Norwegian higher education institutions by funding sources for the period 1995 to 2003. The major funding source is the institutions’ basic budgets – from 86 to 78 percent in the period (in most cases general university funds (GUF) means government appropriations, but for BI also private funds are included in this category).
Apart for this, project funding from the Research Council of Norway is the largest funding source – funding from 6 to 10 percent of the expenditures. Other funding sources than this sponsor relatively small proportions of the research in economics. In 2003 other public sources funded 3 percent, industry 4 percent, other domestic sources such as private organisations and foundations funded 2 percent, and foreign sources funded 2 percent.
Table 3.1 Economics R&D expenditure in Norwegian Higher Education Sector, by funding source. Percentages 1995–2003.
Funding source 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003
General university funds (GUF) 82,2 86,4 84,3 80,5 78,1
Research Council of Norway 8,5 6,2 5,9 9,4 10,3
Other public sources 1,8 3,3 2,2 4,8 3,3
Industry 5,5 2,8 6,1 3,1 4,3
Other domestic sources 0,9 0,1 1,0 0,7 2,4
Foreign sources 1,0 1,2 0,5 1,5 1,7
Of this EU 0,0 0,3 0,0 1,1 1,0
Total percent 100 100 100 100 100
Total Mill NOK* 80,0 88,9 80,1 104,3 138,3
*Current expenditures
Table 3.2 shows differences in funding sources between the three types of higher education institutions (figures for 2003). The universities have the highest share of funding from the Research Council of Norway (RCN), with 19 percent, whereas at the Specialised University Institutions 8 percent of the research is funded by RCN, and at the State University Colleges only 4 percent is funded by RCN. Moreover, at the universities the GUF covers a lower share of the R&D expenditure than at the other institutions. At the universities 66 percent of the economics R&D expenditure comes is GUF, whereas at the State University Colleges 91 percent is GUF and at the Specialised University Institutions 79 percent is GUF.
11 R&D – Research and Development – which is the official statistical category is used in the tables.
Table 3.2 Economics R&D expenditure in Norwegian Higher Education Sector, by funding source and type of institution. Percentages 2003.
Funding source Universities Specialised University Institutions State University Colleges
General university funds 66,2 79,3 91,2
Research Council of Norway 19,0 8,0 3,6 Other public sources 7,6 1,8 0,8
Industry 5,0 4,6 2,8
Other sources 0,4 4,1 1,3
Foreign sources 1,8 2,2 0,3
Of this EU 1,5 1,2 0,0
Total percent 100 100 100
Total Mill NOK 40,8 67,2 30,4
Table 3.2 also shows that the Specialised University Institutions are the largest ‘sector’ as measured by official statistics for R&D expenditure within economics. In 2003 the Specialised University Institutions spent 67 million NOK on economic research, whereas the Universities spent 41 million NOK and the State University Colleges spent 30 millions. This is further
analysed in Table 3.3 which shows figures from 1995 to 2003 and also splits the expenditures on some of the major institution.
Table 3.3 Current R&D expenditure in economics, Norwegian Higher Education Sector, by institution. Percentages within years 1995, 1999 and 2003.
Institution 1995 1999 2003
UiB 9,7 8,2 7,5
UiO 18,3 22,5 11,2
UiT 10,5 6,8 6,0
NTNU 11,2 11,9 4,7
Percent Universities 49,7 49,4 29,5
NHH 36,2 39,8 30,7
BI 2,7 2,9 4,6
UMB/NLH - Norwegian University of Life Sciences (University from Jan 05) 13,2 Percent Specialised University Institutions 39,0 42,8 48,5 Percent State University Colleges 11,4 7,8 22,0
Total percent 100 100 100
Total R&D expenditure, mill. NOK* 80,0 80,1 138,3
*Current expenditures
Note on the disciplinary coding: All R&D at units that codes more than half of their R&D under the discipline of economics are counted as economics in the official R&D statistics. This implies that reorganisations may easily change the statistics – merging or splitting departments may change which units are counted under economist and which are not counted.
According to official statistics NHH has the largest share of the total R&D expenditure in economic research at Norwegian Universities and Colleges. In the period 1995 to 2003, NHH covers between 31 and 40 percent of all R&D expenditure in economic research at Norwegian higher education institutions (Table 3.3). UiO was the second largest in 1995 and 1999, but in 2003 the Norwegian Agricultural University (now Norwegian University of Life Sciences) was included in the statistics and came up as the second largest on expenditure on economic research.
This demonstrates that the R&D statistics may be very sensitive to redefinitions and
reorganisations that may not only reflect changes in R&D expenditures (cf. note to Table 3.3).
The large increase in expenditures in economics from 1999 (80 mill NOK) to 2003 (138 mill NOK) should be understood with this in mind.
As mentioned above, we do not have data on expenditures for economic research in the “institute sector”. For these units we therefore need to use overall funding for all research, regardless of discipline. Table 3.4 shows income by funding source for the four regular research institutes selected for the evaluation (but not the two public agency research departments, for which we do not have such data, see notes to Table 3.4).
Table 3.4 Selected research institutes: Income by funding source. Percentages 2005.
Funding source
Note: Institutes not reporting key-indicators to the RCN are not included in the table, i.e. for the Research Department at the Central Bank of Norway and the Research Department at Statistics Norway (SSB) we do not have comparable data.
Compared to the higher education institutions the research institutes have a relatively low share of their income from core funding or other general funds (such as Strategic Institute Programs).
The core funding of the four institutes varied from 0 to 18 percent in 2005. The Frisch Center and SNF have relatively large shares of their income from RCN project funds, whereas TØI and ISF have the largest shares from other public sources.
Comparisons with other social sciences
Going back to the data split on research disciplines, Table 3.5 shows resources spent on economic R&D compared with other social science disciplines (higher education institutions only).
Table 3.5 Social Sciences R&D expenditure in Norwegian Higher Education Sector, by discipline and year. Mill NOK (current expenditures) 1991–2003.
Discipline 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003
Educational Science 45,3 53,3 115,5 165,4 200,2 221,8 253,9
Economics 76,6 110,1 80,0 88,9 80,1 104,3 138,3
Law and Criminology 44,9 53,2 63,0 84,8 85,5 99,8 116,9 Psychology 36,3 52,6 58,5 69,2 82,8 99,3 116,8 Sociology 23,5 25,1 33,5 35,5 35,0 44,7 55,9 Political Science 27,0 32,0 28,7 33,6 36,9 39,1 42,8 Social Anthropology 23,2 23,3 21,4 25,8 36,9 39,4 39,9 Media/Journalism and Library/Information Science 5,8 7,1 7,0 20,0 20,3 23,0 44,0 Human Geography and Urbanism /Planning 11,7 17,0 20,3 19,8 24,5 24,0 26,7 Other and non-specified Social Sciences 222,4 299,5 309,2 356,2 505,6 571,5 687,0 All social sciences 516,6 673,2 737,1 899,0 1 107,8 1 266,8 1 522,3 Notes:
The growth in educational sciences from 1993 to 1997 appearing from the table is mainly due to redefinitions and improved basis for the statistics.
Noting the high proportion of “other and non-specified social science” (687 of 1522 mill NOK in 2003), precaution should be taken when comparing the disciplines.12
In terms of economic resources, economics is one of the largest social science disciplines in Norway, and far more resources are spent on economics research than comparable disciplines such as Sociology and Political Science (Table 3.5). This is mainly due to the size of economics R&D at the Specialised University Institutions and the State University Colleges. Within the universities, economics rank behind both Sociology and Political Science in terms of R&D resources.13 Due to redefinitions in the statistics, precaution should be taken when comparing the disciplines, see notes to Table 3.5.
Table 3.6 Social Sciences R&D expenditure in Norwegian Higher Education Sector, by funding source and selected disciplines. Percentages within disciplines, 2003.
Discipline *GUF **RCN
12 The proportion of “other and non-specified social sciences” is especially high within the specialised university institutions and the state university colleges, but substantially lower within the universities. See page 36 in Kaja Wendt (2001): Ressursinnsatsen i samfunnsvitenskapelig forskning. Oslo: NIFU skriftserie 29/2001.
13 Within the universities Sociology R&D amounted to 48,1 mill NOK in 2003, Political Science R&D to 41,8 mill NOK and Economics R&D to 40,8 mill NOK.
Table 3.6 shows that institutional general university funds (GUF) covers a somewhat higher share of the economics R&D expenditure, than for comparable Social Sciences disciplines. GUF covers 78 percent of the economics R&D expenditure, and 66 percent of the Political Science R&D expenditure and 62 percent of the Sociology R&D expenditure. However, this difference is mainly due to the size of economics R&D outside the universities. As shown above (Table 3.2), the universities’ general university funds cover only 66 percent of their R&D expenditure in economics.