Analysis of the Research & Development Funding in Greece under EU Programmes

This paper presents the findings of the study of the funding of Research and Development (R&D) projects in Greece. Initially, a descriptive approach by sector and geographical area is performed on the absorption of Research and Development funds upon the completion of 1,949 research projects implemented by 3,259 research institutions in the framework of funding actions of the operational programmes of the Partnership Agreement for the Development Framework, for the 2007-2013 programming period. The absorption indicators identified by type of beneficiary, by scientific field and region resulting from the processing of the above data can be used in the future to allocate the funds for research projects. Subsequently, the paper studies the existence or not of a correlation between the initial project evaluation and the fund absorption at completion, as well as the correlation between the initial project evaluation and the effectiveness indices of projects at completion. For the specific deterministic analysis, statistical models are used with data from 293 research projects implemented in two programmes. In both cases, it appeared that there was no statistically significant relation between the initial evaluation and the degree of fund absorption or the eventual effectiveness of projects, a result which indicates that the initial evaluation approach may need improvement.