Returns to scale in research https://aiimpacts.org/returns-to-scale-in-research/
2016-07-06 Featured Articles, Intelligence explosion, Pace of AI Progress (Without Feedback), Speed of AI Transition 0
When universities or university departments produce research outputs?such as published papers?they sometimes experience increasing returns to scale, sometimes constant returns to scale, and sometimes decreasing returns to scale. At the level of nations however, R&D tends to see increasing returns to scale. These results are preliminary.
Background
“Returns to scale” refers to the responsiveness of a process’ outputs when all inputs (e.g. researcher hours, equipment) are increased by a certain proportion. If all outputs (e.g. published papers, citations, patents) increase by that same proportion, the process is said to exhibit constant returns to scale. Increasing returns to scale and decreasing returns to scale refer to situations where outputs still increase, but by a higher or lower proportion, respectively.
Assessing returns to scale in research may be useful in predicting certain aspects of the development of artificial intelligence, in particular the dynamics of an intelligence explosion.
Results
The conclusions in this article are drawn from an incomplete review of academic literature assessing research efficiency, presented in Table 1. These papers assess research in terms of its direct outputs such as published papers, citations, and patents. The broader effects of the research are not considered.
Most of the papers listed below use the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique, which is a quantitative technique commonly used to assess the efficiency of universities and research activities. It is capable of isolating the scale efficiency of the individual departments, universities or countries being studied.
Paper Level of comparison Activities assessed Results pertaining to returns to scale
Wang & Huang 2007 Countries’ overall R&D activities Research Increasing returns to scale in research are exhibited by more than two-thirds of the sample
Kocher, Luptacik & Sutter 2006 Countries’ R&D in economics Research Increasing returns to scale are found in all countries in the sample except the US
Cherchye & Abeele 2005 Dutch universities’ research in Economics and Business Management Research Returns to scale vary between decreasing, constant and increasing depending on each university’s specialization
Johnes & Johnes 1993 UK universities’ research in economics Research Constant returns to scale are found in the sample as a whole
Avkiran 2001 Australian universities Research, education Constant returns to scale found in most sampled universities
Ahn 1988 US universities Research, education Decreasing returns to scale on average
Johnes 2006 English universities Research, education Close to constant returns to scale exhibited by most universities sampled
Kao & Hung 2008 Departments of a Taiwanese university Research, education Increasing returns to scale exhibited by the five most scale-inefficient departments. However, no aggregate measure of returns to scale within the sample is presented.
Table 1: Sample of studies of research efficiency that assess returns to scale
Note: This table only identifies increasing/constant/decreasing returns to scale, rather than the size of this effect. Although DEA can measure the relative size of the effect for individual departments/universities/countries within a sample, such results cannot be readily compared between samples/studies.
