The Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey, recently released by the National Science Foundation (NSF), measures the dollars spent annually on research and development at American colleges and universities. The survey summarizes the federal, state, and other funds a university spends on all its research activities, and it also breaks those expenditures out by ten major fields, including social sciences.
According to an article in Forbes magazine, "across the social science categories, the University of Michigan topped the list, attaining top ten status in five of the six areas," including political science and government, economics, and "other social sciences," in which public policy is mentioned.