Suchergebnisse

We investigate the effect of a status-enhancing prize on the attention that a recipient's "neighbors" subsequently receive. Do neighbors—individuals who work in economic, intellectual, or artistic domains that are proximate to prize winners—bask in the reflected glory of the ascendant actor and therefore gain as well? Or does competition for attention ensue, attenuating the recognition neighbors would otherwise have garnered? We study the spillover effects of status shocks using life sciences research articles published from 1984 through 2003. Exploiting expert-assigned article keywords, we identify papers that are topically related to publications of future appointees to the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). In difference-in-difference specifications, we find that these scientific neighbor articles experience substantial declines in citation rates after HHMI appointments are announced. That is, neighboring articles attract less attention when authors of papers near them receive a prestigious prize. This pattern reflects more than the trivial transfer of attention from non-winners to winners: once prizes are announced, actors cede scientific territory to prize winners and pursue other opportunities. These negative spillover effects are moderated or even reversed by scientists' social connections and by the novelty and stature of scientific domains.

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.

Since the early 1990s, U.S. pharmaceutical firms have partially outsourced the coordination of the clinical trials they sponsor to specialized firms called contract research organizations. Although these exchanges appeared ripe for the development of close, "embedded" ties, they were in fact "nasty, brutish, and short" — i.e., marked by ill-will and a bias toward replacing current exchange partners due to perceptions of underperformance. Drawing on in-depth field work, we use causal loop diagrams to capture this puzzle and to help explain it. Our analysis suggests that attempts to build embedded relations will fail if the parties do not recognize the limitations of the commitments they can credibly make. More generally, when managers misdiagnose as failure what is in fact a trade-off inherent in the design of their organizations, they risk engendering even worse outcomes than those they would otherwise attain.

We examine how the premature death of eminent life scientists alters the vitality of their fields. While the flow of articles by collaborators into affected fields decreases after the death of a star scientist, the flow of articles by non-collaborators increases markedly. This surge in contributions from outsiders draws upon a different scientific corpus and is disproportionately likely to be highly cited. While outsiders appear reluctant to challenge leadership within a field when the star is alive, the loss of a luminary provides an opportunity for fields to evolve in new directions that advance the frontier of knowledge. (JEL I23, O31, O33)