The Impact of PBS on the Research Performance of Government-Funded Research Institutes

Discourse on improving the Performance-Based System (PBS) of government-funded research institutions is ongoing; however, institutional reforms have yet to be implemented due to insufficient empirical evidence.This study analyzes the factors influencing the research performance of government-funded research institutes, focusing on PBS.For the analysis, data on the research performance (patent applications, patent registrations, and papers) and PBS (ratio of government grants, scale of government grants) of science and technology government-funded research institutes were collected and analyzed using a panel model.The analysis results indicated that an increase in the ratio and scale of government grants leads to increased research performance.However, own-source revenue was found to have a significantly lower impact on improving research performance than government grants.These results suggest that increasing government grants can enhance the research performance of government-funded research institutes and provide empirical evidence for improving the PBS system.Regarding managerial characteristics, it was found that having a bureaucrat as the head of the institute, compared to an internally promoted head, decreases the performance of published papers, and having a head from academia decreases the number of patent applications.