Bloomberg News  (3/26) writes that corporate R&D spending in the US rose 6.7% last year, which is “twice the previous year’s gain and the biggest advance since 1996,” according to data from the Commerce Department. The trend was underscored by a 14% “surge” in the fourth quarter signaling “additional increases are on the way.” Bloomberg News quotes Jason Cummins of Brevan Howard Inc, a hedge fund, as saying, “CEOs wouldn’t be paying all these researchers – which is where the R&D budget primarily flows to – unless they thought that there was something really interesting going on.” He added, “R&D surges like this sow the portents of better productivity growth three, five, 10 years later.” Bloomberg points out that pharma companies “were some of the biggest spenders on R&D in 2012, running up a $48.1 billion tab,” citing the most recent data from the National Science Foundation.

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