Thanks for your comment. This issue is something I plan to address in a future post in more detail. Briefly, my thesis is this. There are two kinds of costs: (i) cost of developing knowledge, (ii) cost of acquiring knowledge developed elsewhere. My point was that for much of the social sciences, area-relevant social science requires that (i) be incurred within the country/region. There are plenty of universal social science findings too, but there is also a political issue that social science findings from other countries are typically not readily accepted because people in each country think they are more unique than they are.

With science, knowledge, whether developed in-house or acquired from elsewhere, doesn’t look all that different. Thus, the question boils down to how the costs of developing knowledge ((i)) compare to the costs of acquiring this knowledge from others ((ii)). As far as basic scientific knowledge (which is by and large readily accessible) is concerned, the cost (ii) could be considerably less, particularly in an era where transportation and communication costs are considerably less. When it comes to technologies that are patented or trade secrets, this doesn’t apply much. But the extra profits that accrue from patents usually accrue only to the specific individuals or companies that get those patents, not to the countries where they live at large.

As far as technological products are concerned, the places where the product R&D happens are not identical to the places where the final products first penetrate the market. Where the final products find a market is more a function of whether there are enough people with the willingness and the resources to try out the products. What I’ve just said is Amar Bhide’s “venturesome consumption” thesis — he argues that, for instance, the United States remains one of the most lucrative markets for new technological products because it has a large number of people eager to try out the latest products. There are other kinds of technological innovations that may find a bigger market in India.

As people in universities, we often hear rhetoric about how a university’s research helps its local community and country. This rhetoric is a useful tool in bagging more subsidies and grants. But let’s not believe it blindly.

I’d like to hear your thoughts, so I can address them in more detail subsequently when I blog on the issue.

I agree with you on most counts except:
Unfortunately, brain drain is more harmful in the social sciences than in the sciences, so to the extent that the above ideological story plays out in reality, it hurts the future of social science knowledge.

Yes, scientific developments are relatively more universal than others but the economic impact of generating that scientific knowledge in the country v/s importing it is as high as if not higher than the economic impact of bad economic policies. What do you think?

I would really interested in reading something that compares these two things.