Related papers: The Costs of Competition in Distributing Scarce Re…
Scientific research funding is allocated largely through a system of soliciting and ranking competitive grant proposals. In these competitions, the proposals themselves are not the deliverables that the funder seeks, but instead are used by…
This paper overviews the economics of scientific grants, focusing on the interplay between the inherent uncertainty in research, researchers' incentives, and grant design. Grants differ from traditional market systems and other science and…
When funding public goods, resources are often allocated via mechanisms that resemble contests, especially in the case of research grants. A common critique of these contests is that they induce ``too much'' effort from participants. This…
In science as elsewhere, attention is a limited resource and scientists compete with one another to produce the most exciting, novel and impactful results. We develop a game-theoretic model to explore how such competition influences the…
Research projects are primarily collaborative in nature through internal and external partnerships, but what role does funding play in their formation? Here, we examined over 43,000 funded projects in the past three decades, enabling us to…
An increasing number of nations allocate public funds to research institutions on the basis of rankings obtained from national evaluation exercises. Therefore, in non-competitive higher education systems where top scientists are dispersed…
US funding agencies alone distribute a yearly total of roughly $65B dollars largely through the process of proposal peer review: scientists compete for project funding by submitting grant proposals which are evaluated by selected panels of…
Access to resources strongly constrains the decisions we make. While we might wish to offer every student a scholarship, or schedule every patient for follow-up meetings with a specialist, limited resources mean that this is not possible.…
The design of research grants has been hypothesized to be a useful tool for influencing researchers and their science. We test this by conducting two thought experiments in a nationally representative survey of academic researchers. First,…
Innovative ideas are often situated where disciplines meet, and socio-economic problems generally require contributions from several disciplines. Ways to stimulate interdisciplinary research collaborations are therefore an increasing point…
Persistent economic competition is often justified as a mechanism of innovation, efficiency, and welfare maximization. Yet empirical evidence across disciplines reveals that competition systematically generates fragility, inequality, and…
Humans have developed considerable machinery used at scale to create policies and to distribute incentives, yet we are forever seeking ways in which to improve upon these, our institutions. Especially when funding is limited, it is…
After 2009 many governments implemented austerity measures, often restricting science funding. Did such restrictions further skew grant income towards elite scientists and universities? And did increased competition for funding undermine…
Higher education systems in competitive environments generally present top universities, that are able to attract top scientists, top students and public and private financing, with notable socio-economic benefits in their region. The same…
We use citation data of scientific articles produced by individual nations in different scientific domains to determine the structure and efficiency of national research systems. We characterize the scientific fitness of each nation (that…
A major gap exists between the conceptual suggestion of how much a nation should invest in science, innovation, and technology, and the practical implementation of what is done. We identify 4 critical challenges that must be address in…
Communicating new scientific discoveries is key to human progress. Yet, this endeavor is hindered by monetary restrictions for publishing one's findings and accessing other scientists' reports. This process is further exacerbated by a large…
This work bridges the technical concepts underlying distributed computing and blockchain technologies with their profound socioeconomic and sociopolitical implications, particularly on academic research and the healthcare industry. Several…
Strategic classification studies the design of a classifier robust to the manipulation of input by strategic individuals. However, the existing literature does not consider the effect of competition among individuals as induced by the…
Academic challenges comprise effective means for (i) advancing the state of the art, (ii) putting in the spotlight of a scientific community specific topics and problems, as well as (iii) closing the gap for under represented communities in…