How to promote the R&D investment performance by Korean local governments?

초록

This study examines the R&D performance of Korea from the perspective of local governments, based on the Slack Based Model-Data Envelopment Analysis (SBM-DEA). Since the SBM is the methodology that overcome previous traditional DEA model, it is expected to obtain more reliable empirical results for R&D investment performance in Korea. Additionally, by conducting bootstrapping, this study tries to enhance statistical reliability. From the empirical results, we found that Korea shows R&D investment performance with the average value 67.7%, implying there exists 32.3% potential efficiency improvement. Among 16 local governments, Seoul, Gwangju, Daegu and Gangwon show better performance with the average value more than 0.8. Secondly, we decomposed R&D investment efficiency into pure R&D investment technical efficiency and scale efficiency (SE), and found implication concerning inputs’ scale. Finally, we reported benchmark information of trend setter local governments that shows ideal input mix to the fast-following local governments. The results of this study offer implications for policymakers among Korean local governments toward the R&D investment.