Public debt is higher—and rising faster than it did before the pandemic—in 80% of the world’s economies, according to the International Monetary Fund. If today’s pace continues, the IMF says global public debt could reach 100% of GDP by the end of this decade.
That warning is colliding with another reality: governments are being asked to keep investing in science and research even as public money becomes scarcer, more contested, and more tightly conditioned. The question echoing through ministries, research agencies, local governments, and legislatures is no longer just how much to spend—but how to spend it better.
IMF: Debt is climbing as geopolitical uncertainty hardens
The IMF’s latest fiscal report paints a tougher macroeconomic backdrop. In 80% of global economies, public debt is now higher and increasing more quickly than it was before the pandemic, the fund says. At the current trajectory, the IMF adds, global public debt could reach 100% of GDP by the end of the decade.
The same report emphasizes the context: sustained geopolitical and economic uncertainty that can weaken global financial resilience. For public spending, the impact is immediate. Budget tradeoffs tighten, and long-horizon programs—like basic research—end up competing with visible, near-term priorities such as energy, defense, health, climate adaptation, and infrastructure.
In that environment, scientific investment can’t rely only on its intrinsic value as a public good. It also has to demonstrate results, feed the broader economy, and support collective goals. The debate shifts from the level of spending to the efficiency of spending.
OECD: Make public investment match clear goals—environment, digital, research
“Efficiency” is no longer just a talking point; it has become a central policy lever. In a note focused on France, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) argues that improving the efficiency of public investment also requires targeting spending in a way that aligns with stated objectives in areas including the environment, digital policy, and research.
That matters for science because public research funding isn’t a standalone budget line. It is intertwined with innovation policy, industrial strategy, higher education, the green transition, and technological sovereignty. But as objectives multiply, so does the risk of scattershot spending: a proliferation of programs, overlapping funding windows, stacked calls for proposals, and clashing timelines.
Making investment more effective, in this view, starts with clarifying what public spending is supposed to achieve—producing knowledge, accelerating technology transfer, building industrial sectors, strengthening national capabilities, or meeting immediate public needs. Those goals aren’t mutually exclusive, but they require different steering. Exploratory research needs time and stability; mission-oriented research demands partnerships, metrics, and alignment with public and private demand. By tying investment to objectives, the OECD is also pointing to governance: who decides, at what level, using which criteria—and how course corrections happen when results fall short.
In periods of budget stress, that kind of clarity becomes a survival condition. A science strategy without priorities risks absorbing cuts rather than shaping decisions.
Sciences Po research: Public capital supports growth and transition goals
Research is not only a bet on the future; it is part of a broader investment in what economists call “public capital.” In a publication available on HAL (Sciences Po’s open-access platform), the authors argue that adequate public investment raises long-term potential growth, supports activity in the short term, and helps meet transition objectives.
That framework helps explain why science keeps returning to the center of fiscal debates. Research spending doesn’t just produce papers or patents; it builds skills, infrastructure, data, technology platforms, and collaboration networks. It also shows up in tangible assets—labs, supercomputers, measurement instruments, and testing sites. In other words, the effectiveness of scientific investment depends partly on the quality of the public capital surrounding it.
When public capital deteriorates, research pays twice: it becomes harder to do the work, and the system becomes less attractive. A coherent investment policy can create the opposite effect—high-quality infrastructure draws talent, spurs partnerships, and makes it easier to translate research into real-world use. The same logic applies to the interfaces between science and the economy: technology transfer centers, shared platforms, clinical trials, demonstrators, and access to data. The question isn’t only how much to spend on research, but how to organize the ecosystem so each euro spent generates more capability.
This approach aligns with a view shared by many economists: efficiency isn’t just a budget ratio—it’s institutional design. It depends on evaluation procedures, program continuity, coordination among public actors, and the ability to learn from failures.
After 2010, public investment fell—reviving the fight over fiscal rules
Today’s squeeze didn’t come out of nowhere. An analysis published by the site Sciences économiques et sociales notes that public investment was the biggest loser of the budget consolidations that followed the 2010 sovereign debt crisis. The same piece adds that the decline in public capital stock had already begun in the 1980s across most OECD countries.
That history shapes today’s arguments over science funding. When investment becomes the adjustment variable, the damage often arrives later but runs deep: aging infrastructure, interrupted projects, lost expertise, demoralized teams, and fragmented priorities. And when a crisis hits, governments end up reinvesting in a rush—often at higher cost and with less efficiency.
The analysis also makes a political point: recent crises have pushed a reassessment of public investment as both a countercyclical tool and a driver of long-term growth—raising questions about the European Union’s fiscal rules. But it adds a constraint: given the debt levels inherited from the last decade’s crises and Europe’s institutional context, it will be difficult to reach investment levels commensurate with today’s challenges, from the green transition to public goods and industrial policy.
That’s where the stakes sharpen. If science is treated as just another expense, it will be cut. If it is treated as part of public capital and a lever for transition, it can be protected—but only with higher demands on spending quality. The debate becomes practical: which programs get shielded, which are merged, which are ended? How do governments avoid scattering funds across micro-projects that can’t clear a decisive milestone? How do they provide enough stability for long-term research while still financing immediate priorities?
Trade openness vs. barriers: The broader economy can make or break investment efficiency
Another factor often pushed to the margins is the economic environment in which public spending lands. A document on the efficiency of public investment argues that a more open economy—with fewer barriers to trade—makes public investment spending more effective, according to a PDF titled Efficacité de l’investissement public: une nouvelle évidence…
Applied to science, the message is straightforward: public research investment delivers more when it can circulate, be tested, and spread. International collaborations, access to equipment, researcher mobility, dissemination of results, and companies’ ability to absorb innovation all depend on openness. But the current period is defined by tensions—controls on sensitive technologies, industrial rivalries, restrictions on certain components, and debates over sovereignty. Openness is no longer automatic; it’s a choice.
That creates a tightrope for governments. On one side, research benefits from open ecosystems, smooth supply chains, and shared standards. On the other, security and strategic autonomy push countries to reshore, control, and filter. The efficiency of public investment is also decided here: in choosing the domains where openness remains a force multiplier—and those where dependence becomes a risk.
In science budgets, that translates into decisions about critical infrastructure, data, partnerships, equipment procurement, and even project governance. To be efficient, public investment has to account for those constraints upfront, not discover them midstream.
CEID 2023: Measuring “efficiency” is becoming unavoidable—and methodologically hard
Another PDF, Efficacité de l’investissement public: une nouvelle… published by CEID in 2023, analyzes the efficiency of public investments in developing countries using models. The setting differs, but the core idea carries: efficiency isn’t a vibe—it can be measured, compared, and debated.
For scientific investment, measurement is tricky. Outcomes can be uncertain, nonlinear, and sometimes unpredictable. A major breakthrough can come from a modest program, and a large program can fail. That can tempt policymakers to lean on easy but incomplete indicators: publication counts, patent filings, fundraising totals, start-up creation. Those metrics have value, but they don’t capture everything—especially when research aims at public goods, crisis-response capacity, or long technological transitions.
The goal isn’t to impose simplistic accounting on science. It’s to build evaluation that separates long-horizon work from operational targets—what must remain stable versus what should be redirected. Efficiency also depends on reducing friction: administrative delays, complex calls for proposals, uncertainty about funding continuity, and stacked programs. In a high-debt environment, those frictions become politically costly. And science—often operating on timelines longer than budget cycles—is the first to feel it.
The silence after a cut is announced in a lab is a social fact. It doesn’t show up as a percentage point of GDP. It shows up in delayed timelines, frozen hiring, and postponed partnerships. The IMF’s debt warning forces governments to choose. The efficiency of public investment in science becomes a test of credibility: whether a country can fund, evaluate, correct, and sustain a long-term trajectory.
Sources
[PDF] Efficacité de l’investissement public : une nouvelle évidence dans …
Améliorer l’efficience de l’investissement public en France | OECD
Investissement public, capital public et croissance – HAL Sciences Po
Comment relancer l’investissement public pour faire face aux défis d’aujourd’hui ? — Sciences économiques et sociales
[PDF] efficacité de l’investissement public : une nouvelle – CEID 2023
