The DOI matches its Crossref record; 8 of the 8 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Incentives and creativity: evidence from the academic life sciences
Open accessAbstract
Despite its presumed role as an engine of economic growth, we know surprisingly little about the drivers of scientific creativity. We exploit key differences across funding streams within the academic life sciences to estimate the impact of incentives on the rate and direction of scientific exploration. Specifically, we study the careers of investigators of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), which tolerates early failure, rewards long‐term success, and gives its appointees great freedom to experiment, and grantees from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), who are subject to short review cycles, predefined deliverables, and renewal policies unforgiving of failure. Using a combination of propensity‐score weighting and difference‐in‐differences estimation strategies, we find that HHMI investigators produce high‐impact articles at a much higher rate than a control group of similarly accomplished NIH‐funded scientists. Moreover, the direction of their research changes in ways that suggest the program induces them to explore novel lines of inquiry.
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Cites
Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning
March, J. G. (1991) · Organization Science · doi:10.1287/orsc.2.1.71 · Cited by 21,942
The Matthew Effect in Science: The reward and communication systems of science are considered.
Merton, R. K. (1968) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.159.3810.56 · Cited by 6,720 · cited 1×
“Second, the prestige conferred by HHMI appointment might have independent effects on scientists’ achievements, either by increasing exposure to their research, or through a dynamic of ascription that has long been the focus of sociologists of science (Merton 1968).”
Structural Holes and Good Ideas
Burt, R. S. (2004) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/421787 · Cited by 5,642
Marginal Structural Models and Causal Inference in Epidemiology
Robins, J. M., Hernán, M. Á., & Brumback, B. (2000) · Epidemiology · doi:10.1097/00001648-200009000-00011 · Cited by 5,581
Does matching overcome lalonde’s critique of nonexperimental estimators?
A. Smith, J., & E. Todd, P. (2005) · Journal of Econometrics · doi:10.1016/j.jeconom.2004.04.011 · Cited by 3,176
Semiparametric Difference-in-Differences Estimators
Abadie, A. (2005) · The Review of Economic Studies · doi:10.1111/0034-6527.00321 · Cited by 2,286
Hirano, K., & Imbens, G. W. (2001) · Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology · doi:10.1023/a:1020371312283 · Cited by 1,039
Azoulay, P., Zivin, J. S. G., & Wang, J. (2010) · Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.1162/qjec.2010.125.2.549 · Cited by 720
Self-citation
Cited by
Atypical Combinations and Scientific Impact
Uzzi, B., Mukherjee, S., Stringer, M., & Jones, B. (2013) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1240474 · Cited by 1,457
Fortunato, S., Bergstrom, C. T., Börner, K., Evans, J. A., Helbing, D., Milojević, S., Petersen, A. M., Radicchi, F., Sinatra, R., Uzzi, B., et al. (2018) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aao0185 · Cited by 1,497
“For example, one study finds that funding schemes that are tolerant of early failure, which reward long-term success, are more likely to generate high-impact publications than grants subject to short review cycles (31).”
Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time
Park, M., Leahey, E., & Funk, R. J. (2023) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-022-05543-x · Cited by 899
Rescuing US biomedical research from its systemic flaws
Alberts, B., Kirschner, M. W., Tilghman, S., & Varmus, H. (2014) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1404402111 · Cited by 817
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Metadata
- Authors
- Azoulay, P., Graff Zivin, J. S., & Manso, G.
- Venue
- The RAND Journal of Economics
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2011-09
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 527-554
- ISSN
- 0741-6261 (ISSN-L)
- 1756-2171
- OpenAlex
- W2158550208
- Cited by
- 648
- References
- 8
- FWCI
- 59.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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- Azoulay, P., Graff Zivin, J. S., & Manso, G. (2011). Incentives and creativity: evidence from the academic life sciences. The RAND Journal of Economics. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-2171.2011.00140.x
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
