The economics of scientific research is a new branch of knowledge that originated at the interface between the science of science and the science of economics in the 1950s and 1960s. As recently as the first half of our century scientific research was regarded as one of the natural manifestations of the development of civilization, as something like the air we breathe without reflecting on its value. For this reason the very formulation of the question of the economic study of science was impossible at that time. However, in our day the attitude of economists toward the sphere of scientific activity is different.