… is from page 269 of Matt Ridley’s 2010 book, The Rational Optimist; (the quotation is from Terence Kealey’s 2006 book, Sex, Science and Profits; the OECD study is here):
A large study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development concluded that government spending on R&D had no observable effect on economic growth, despite what governments believe. Indeed it ‘crowds out resources that could be alternatively used by the private sector, including private R&D’.
