Early Career Choice, Funding Variation and Scientific Output

National Bureau Of Economic Research Inc, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Young life science researchers, after completion of their post-doctoral apprenticeship, may elect to begin their careers by either entering academia, or by joining biotechnology or pharmaceutical firms. These choices clearly depend upon scientist?s individual preferences for salary and degree of research autonomy. However career choice is also affected by external constraints such as the availability of, and competition for, research funding. Historically the amount of public research funding has changed over time reflecting congressional priorities. This project will provide the first quantitative evidence on the heretofore hidden costs and potential benefits of variability in the public funding of science research. Research funding variability may lead to a misallocation of talent and reforms that create more certainty in the budget allocation process could generate greater social benefits at lower costs. At the same time, research funding variability may increase the transmission of knowledge between academia and industry with potentially important policy implications for advancing scientific innovation, improving health and promoting economic growth. Exogenous variation in the availability of public funding for research (both over time and across fields) is used to examine the initial career choice of recipients of elite postdoctoral fellowships in biology. These career choice constraints are then used in an instrumental variables framework to estimate the long-run consequences of this initial career choice, with a focus on both patent and publication outcomes. The degree to which scarce public R&D funding leads to positive productivity shocks for private sector firms who can more readily draw from the academic elite to staff their laboratories will also be directly assessed.