funding - How economically efficient is the grant system?

I wonder if someone (or eventually some country, organisation, etc ...) already evaluated the costs of the system of grants.

• It costs at least the salary of the researcher who writes and gets the grant



• but also the salary of all the researchers who didn’t get it, and could have done something else than writing a proposal


• plus the costs in administration (e.g. the National Contact Point(s) in Europe at several places in each country)


• plus the cost of organising the referral (travels, meetings, ...)


• plus the cost of the grant itself, of course.

On the positive side, of course the entire society benefits from a completed grant.

So my questions are:

• Are there some studies about the economical efficiency of the grant system?


• What are their conclusions?



• How much does the granting costs?


• Are there other system evaluated?

Partially related questions :

but this question is really about the economy of research and factual investigations about the system of grants, not about feeling from researchers.