The Costs and Benefits of Funding Military Research and Development Policy :: Papers

The Costs and Benefits of Funding Military Research and teaching PolicyThe central issues when evaluating the ov termll the United States explore and teaching polity are the characteristics of a reality technical. A public good by definition is one that has a zero marginal cost of providing the good an additional person and from which single(a)s cannot be excluded. Research and development policy contributes to the take aim of knowledge and technology of the entire country. Knowledge, is in most cases, a public good under the aforementioned definition. Giving knowledge to an additional individual does not take away from the total amount of knowledge available, and forcing out from knowledge is frequently difficult to maintain. A market failure is often associated with public goods, and knowledge is not an exception. Regarding knowledge, and specifically research and development, the market fails to offer up this good at adequate levels. The government then steps in t o attempt to repair this failure through its research and development livelihood policy. The following paper details the costs and benefits incurred through funding research and development specifically within the realm of subject refutal.National defence force is also a public good. The government provides national defense to correct the reality that if left uninfluenced, the market will not provide national defense at an adequate level. The U.S. government funds research and development in the area of defense at a much greater level than any other.Background Major policy initiatives were undertaken during the Reagan and Bush administrations in order to research and develop technologies that would aid in the Cold War. This was the sequence of Reagans arms stockpiling that pushed the defense budget to nearly common chord times the amount it is today, maxing out at just over $800 billion. (Stiglitz, 332) Policymakers were implicated with creating weapons and technology t hat were more sophisticated than those of the Soviet Union. Programs such as the semiconductor device research consortium, SEMATECH, the Defense departments Technology Reinvestment Program (TRP) and the move on Technology Program (ATP) grew out of these years all of which took advantage of defense funding to establish dual-use technologies, that is technologies with specific uses to two the civilian market and the military. In 1986, the Federal Technology Transfer Act was established to allow federal laboratories to conduct cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) with private firms. The Reagan and Bush era policies supported high technology research and development that related to both the civilian market and to the military.