化工業(yè)巨頭陶氏化學與杜邦的合并新聞，令外界對美國公司的狀況及其與華爾街的關(guān)系產(chǎn)生了許多疑問。其中最緊迫的問題是，此次合并對于那些在基礎(chǔ)研究領(lǐng)域投入巨資的公司究竟意味著什么。

《財富》雜志編輯艾倫?默里發(fā)表文章表示，此次交易很難令人感到開心，“除非你是投資銀行家”。據(jù)報道，此次交易將把合并之后的公司拆分成三個新的業(yè)務部門，經(jīng)營的領(lǐng)域分別為農(nóng)業(yè)、材料科學和特種產(chǎn)品。他寫道：“股東或許能從這種大規(guī)模的公司改造工程中獲利，因為在消息傳出之后，兩家公司的股票均出現(xiàn)小幅上漲，但最終的結(jié)果必定是裁員和研發(fā)預算縮水。請原諒我的語氣聽起來像特朗普，但不難想象，中國中化集團的人肯定在彈冠相慶?！?/p>

事實上，在杜邦前任CEO柯愛倫與維權(quán)投資者尼爾森?佩爾茲爭奪公司控制權(quán)的過程中，杜邦的基礎(chǔ)研究投入一直是雙方?jīng)_突的焦點?！敦敻弧冯s志之前曾報道過杜邦內(nèi)部的權(quán)力之爭。佩爾茲批評公司龐大的開支，而柯愛倫卻在努力維護她提出的公司愿景——讓杜邦成為少數(shù)幾家借科技之力解決世界大問題的大公司之一。

但柯愛倫最終于10月份辭職，而此次關(guān)于兩家公司合并的消息，成為另一個坊間證據(jù)，進一步表明美國公司正在放棄柯愛倫生動闡述的科學雄心。

但這些傳聞是否有統(tǒng)計數(shù)據(jù)為依據(jù)？《財富》雜志梳理了“《財富》美國500強”的財務數(shù)據(jù)。結(jié)果發(fā)現(xiàn)，僅有95家將研發(fā)開支作為一項單獨開支，但去年，這些公司的研發(fā)支出在總銷售額中所占的比例僅有1.5%。不過，這個數(shù)據(jù)在過去25年間一直保持不變。

此外，最近研發(fā)支出的增長速度開始放緩。去年，研發(fā)支出僅增長了8%。而在過去25年間，平均研發(fā)支出增長速度為10%。

即便對于那些將研發(fā)支出作為獨立分類的公司，我們也不清楚這些錢都花在了何處。杜克大學富卡商學院的經(jīng)濟學家阿西施?阿羅拉也一直在關(guān)注這一趨勢，研究美國公司是否確實在減少科研投資。由于多數(shù)公司沒有公布研發(fā)支出，他與同事轉(zhuǎn)而選擇研究公司聘用的科學家在科研期刊上發(fā)表新研究成果的速度，結(jié)果令人震驚。

The rumored merger between chemical giants Dowand DuPonthas raised many questions about the state of Corporate America and its relationship to Wall Street, and none more pressing than what it will mean for firms that invest heavily in basic research.

As Fortune Editor Alan Murray argued it’s hard to feel good about the deal—which will reportedly split the combined company into three new units that focus on agriculture, materials science and specialty products, respectively—”unless you’re an investment banker.” He wrote:

Perhaps shareholders will make money from this massive act of corporate engineering—both stocks rose modestly after the announcement—but the end result is sure to be fewer employees and shrinking research budgets. Pardon me for sounding Trumpian, but it’s hard to believe the folks at Sinochem aren’t cheering.

Indeed, disagreements over DuPont’s spending on basic research were a point of conflict during the struggle between former DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman and activist investor Nelson Peltz to control the company, which Fortune documented in May. Peltz has criticized the firm for its bloated spending, while Kullman defended her vision of the company as one of the few in the world that was large enough to solve the world’s big problems through science.

But Kullman stepped down in October, and reports of the merger are another piece of anecdotal evidence that U.S. companies are abandoning the scientific ambitions that Kullman articulated so eloquently.

But are these anecdotes backed up by statistics? Fortune combed through the financials of Fortune 500 companies, and found that, for the companies that breakout R&D as a separate expenditure, which was only 95 companies of the 500, research spending is small as a percentage of total sales, just 1.5% last year. But that figure has remained constant over the past 25 years.

Still there has been some slowdown in the growth in R&D spending recently. It was up just 8% last year. R&D spending growth has averaged 10% over the past 25 years.

But even for the companies that break out R&D spending, its unclear what they are spending their money on. Ashish Arora, an economist at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, has also been looking at this trend, trying to figure out whether Corporate America is indeed investing less in scientific research. Faced with the problem that most companies don’t report R&D spending, he and and his colleagues Sharon Belenzon and Andrea Patacconi studied that rate at which company-employed scientists were publishing new findings in scientific journals, and the results were striking.

如上圖的紅線所示，在1980年至2007年期間，發(fā)表新科研成果的公司比例減少了三分之二。至2007年，在阿羅拉研究的2000多家上市公司中，這一比例僅有10%，而在25年前，這一比例還是30%。

是什么導致了這種下降？部分原因來自公開市場和投資者。公司沒有從研發(fā)投入中得到回報。阿羅拉發(fā)現(xiàn)，重視研發(fā)的公司，在公開市場的估值更低。他指出，相比35年前，“私人公司對基礎(chǔ)科研的重視程度和需求在不斷下降。”

對于造成這種現(xiàn)象的具體原因，以及我們是否應該為此感到擔憂，經(jīng)濟學界仍在爭論不休。而陶氏杜邦的合并新聞則是另外一個數(shù)據(jù)點，證明了美國公司放棄基礎(chǔ)研究是一個長期趨勢，但市場似乎對此并不關(guān)心。（財富中文網(wǎng)）

譯者:劉進龍/汪皓

審校：任文科

As you can see from the red line in the chart above, the share of companies that are publishing new scientific research has fallen by two-thirds between 1980 and 2007. By 2007, it was just 10%, down from 30% more than two and a half decades earlier, of the more than 2,000 publicly traded companies Arora looked at.

What’s driving the drop? In part, public markets and investors. Companies are not getting rewarded for their research efforts. Arora found that corporations that do engage in scientific research are less valuable in public markets. As he says “private corporations value basic science less and demand less of it” than they did thirty-five years ago.

Why this is, exactly—or whether we should be concerned about it—is still being debated by economists. But Dow-DuPont merger is another data point in what appears to be a long trend of Corporate America turning its back on basic research, and the market not minding.