OWG Proposed Target 9b
RATING: UNCERTAIN – the rating for this goal depends on the policies used to obtain them. As stated in target 8.2 and 8.3, Maskus (2014) shows that raising R&D for developing and emerging economies beyond current trends through government expenditure or R&D credits will produce benefit-cost ratios in the FAIR range and even then, only between 1 to 2. However, creating an environment that encourages integration into global value chains and providing opportunities to benefit from knowledge spillovers from developed countries can have much larger benefit-to-cost ratios.
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In our recent report, not just the target above, but all 169 targets have been assessed by 60 teams of the world’s top economists. The targets have been categorized into five ratings based on evidence of economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits. While we applaud that the UN Open Working Group's final outcome document contains 43 fewer targets than the previous document, we are concerned that many targets have simply been combined, therefore reducing the number of both phenomenal and poor targets assessed according to our cost-benefit analysis. Our new assessment includes suggestions for how these can be improved as reported in this article by the Financial Times.
