One of the major criteria for NSF grant are "broader impacts" (likewise with other funding agencies).
In recent years, Altmetrics and similar tools and indexes have been devised to measure impact beyond citations -- e.g. social media or non-traditional citations/mentions. 
In terms of economics and decision making for the policy making in academic research, is seems reasonable that would be some measurement method, performance index, or framework to evaluate "broader impacts". Can you provide any references to such methods, indexes, or frameworks?