Having emerged from World War II as a permanent feature of American political and economic life, the “glamour” of research and development (R&D) would soon take hold of Wall Street. By the 1960s, shares of high-tech electronics and aerospace firms became irresistible to the flood of young men entering the securities business with the hopes of getting rich quick off capital gains. For this generation, R&D spending today came to mean earnings growth tomorrow, and in periods of financial hardship, executives under pressure to meet earnings expectations changed R&D accounting policies to boost their bottom lines. With this change, firms experiencing significant losses could maintain the appearance of profitability while reinforcing public perceptions of R&D as a magic bullet for growth. Contrary to the mythology of the “space age,” however, those intimately involved in R&D and tracking its costs insisted that expenditures so incurred failed in practice to qualify as assets. Drawing from arguments made by industrial researchers and cost accountants, this article problematizes the “R&D underinvestment” consensus that emerged in the wake of the space age and suggests dropping the R&D asset view wherever it circulates, including in academic scholarship.

第二次世界大战结束后，研发（R&D）的“魅力”很快就占领了华尔街，成为美国政治和经济生活的永久特征。到了 20 世纪 60 年代，高科技电子和航空航天公司的股票对于大量进入证券行业的年轻人来说变得不可抗拒，他们希望通过资本收益快速致富。对于这一代人来说，今天的研发支出意味着明天的盈利增长，在财务困难时期，高管们在满足盈利预期的压力下改变了研发会计政策，以提高利润。通过这一变化，遭受重大损失的公司可以维持盈利的表象，同时强化公众对研发作为增长灵丹妙药的看法。然而，与“太空时代”的神话相反，那些密切参与研发并跟踪其成本的人坚称，如此产生的支出实际上并不符合资产的资格。本文借鉴工业研究人员和成本会计师的观点，对太空时代后出现的“研发投资不足”共识提出了问题，并建议放弃无论在何处流传的研发资产观点，包括学术界。