COMPETITIVENESS AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY - THE GERMAN EXPERIENCE

Government intervention geared to promotion of research and development meets with broad acceptance in the general public. The question is, however, whether this positive attitude towards government interventions in R & D is justified or not. In the view of the five leading economic research institutes of dic FRG, whose structural reports have been sketched her, dic arguments in favour of increased state interventionism in the field of R & D have a weak standing - with the exception of the field of basic research. In the final analysis, however, the assessment of technology policy as an instrument of competitiveness depends on whether we succeed in answering the question what "competitiveness" is and by what it is determined. Thus it is theoretical deficits in this field that confine scientific counselling within narrow boundaries.