Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A university spin-out company, seeded by grant-funded research, that reaches revenue and employs staff -- evidenced through company accounts and employment records, not modelling alone.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A patent that is granted but never licensed or commercialised has no economic impact yet, even though it may represent real academic or technical achievement.
Editorial commentary
Economic impact is the subset of research impact that can be expressed in financial or economic terms: jobs created or supported, gross-value-added estimates, licence and royalty revenue, spin-out company formation and valuation, and cost savings realised by public services. It is distinguished from societal impact by requiring a quantifiable monetary or employment figure rather than a qualitative change in practice or attitude, even though the two commonly arise from the same underlying research.
Measurement methods
Three method families dominate practice. Macroeconomic input-output modelling estimates a research base’s wider economic footprint (BiGGAR Economics’ studies of UK university and Russell Group economic contribution are a widely cited example). Payback-style methods, originating with the Wellcome Trust’s payback framework (Buxton and Hanney), trace a chain from research investment through to realised economic (and other) benefit. Case-based evidence aggregation — the REF impact-case-study approach applied specifically to economic outcomes — documents individual, verifiable instances of economic benefit rather than modelling an aggregate figure.
Known limitations
Economic-impact estimates are widely criticised on two specific grounds: attribution assumptions (how much of a company’s revenue or a region’s job growth should be credited to one research programme among many contributing factors) are often contestable and highly sensitive to modelling choices, and intangible or long-tail effects — benefits that accrue slowly, indirectly, or decades after the underlying research — are systematically under-counted because they fall outside the window a typical assessment or funding-cycle report covers. Reported economic-impact figures should be read alongside their stated attribution methodology, not taken as a standalone number.
Where this connects
Economic impact from university research commonly flows through licensing, spin-outs and industry collaboration — the mechanics of which sit in CASRAI’s technology transfer content — and is one of the impact types documented in a REF impact case study alongside societal and policy impact.
References
- Buxton M, Hanney S, Wellcome Trust payback framework, 1996. BiGGAR Economics, “Economic impact of the Russell Group”, 2018.
Also known as
Economic impact of research
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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