Nauka kao javno dobro
Science as a public good

Author(s): Vladimir Ž. Milisavljević
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Philosophy, Social Sciences
Published by: Институт друштвених наука
Keywords: economics; market; public goods; science; technology
Summary/Abstract: This text examines the merits and flaws of the once widely accepted theory of science as a „public good“ by situating it in its historical context (the Cold War period) as well as in the general theoretical framework of the economics of knowledge. The central assumption of the theory is that scientific knowledge exhibits two features by which it diverges from the standard or private goods: non-excludability and non-rivalrous consumption. This would be the reason why leaving science to the mechanisms of the free market economy, with its model of competitive equilibrium, would result in its undersupply, i.e., in a suboptimal outcome for the society as a whole. Hence the conclusion that the progress of scientific knowledge requires generous subsidies from the public authority. The central assumption of the theory of science as a public good has been widely challenged. By now, the public good model of science has been supplanted by some new concepts, such as the „endogenous growth theory“, which, by contrast, treat science as a private or monopolistic good. This shift in the economics of science relies on the growing trend of commodification of scientific research, which has dire consequences for the development of basic sciences, in particular for social sciences and humanities. However, I do not argue that we should revert to the theory of science as a public good, but rather that we should reexamine the assumption which this theory shares with the more recent orthodox liberal economic models of science: that the value of scientific research could be assessed solely in terms of its measurable economic effects. Some critical remarks are devoted to the methodology of the Serbian government for assessing the quality of scientific research, in particular when it comes to the social sciences and humanities.

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