Tender: research expenditure on labour and infrastructure
The European Commission's Directorate-General for Research has issued a call for tenders for a study on economies of scale: analysis of data on research expenditure on labour and infrastructure. One of the core assumptions underlying the ERA (European Research Area) is that economies of scale and scope matter in research funding and execution, and that therefore coordination and collaboration in research funding and execution are beneficial for, and fragmentation and dispersal have a negative impact on, Europe's S&T (science and technology) performance. Because of gaps in the relevant research, this assumption remains largely to be validated. The purpose of this call for tender is to start filling those gaps and obtain a much better insight into when and where in research economies of scale and scope matter. One aspect of scale that deserves analysis is country size, and in particular how the scale of national research spending has evolved in terms of its different components, and how it differs between countries. The aim is to examine these issues via the comparative use of international data drawing upon official statistical sources.For further information, please contact: European Commission Directorate-General Research SDME 9/07 Attn: Mr Brian Sloan B-1049 Brussels Fax: +32 2 296 28 40 E-mail: rtd-call-data-2007@ec.europa.eu URL: http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/research/tenders/open_en.html(opens in new window) To see the full details of the call, please consult the following web address: http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:000060-2008:TEXT:EN:HTML(opens in new window)