Abstract: Using panel data of 66 typical countries in 1996-2013, this paper empirically studies the effect of government R&D fundings to technological progress. The results show that the effect of government R&D fundings to technology progress is different among countries. The regional estimation results show that the technology progress effect of government R&D fundings is affected by many factors. Among them, The effect is significantly positive in high income countries, significantly negative in nations of low income; Samely, The effect is positive in nations of high urbanization level, but government R&D fundings can not promote technological progress in the low level of urbanization countries; the coefficient of government R&D fundings in densely populated areas is significantly positive, while the coefficients are all significantly negative in the middle population area and sparsely populated district , and the coefficient of sparsely populated areas is higher than middle population area.