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Uncertainty and individual discretion in allocating research funds

Author(s)
Kearney, Michael J.(Michael Joseph)
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Other Contributors
Sloan School of Management.
Advisor
Pierre Azoulay.
Terms of use
MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582
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Abstract
There is a long-standing tradition in public research funding agencies of distributing funds via peer review, which aggregates evaluations of proposed research ideas from a group of external experts. Despite complaints that this process is biased against novel ideas, there is poor understanding of an alternative system that may overcome this bias: the use of individual discretion. Here, we conduct the first quantitative study of how individual discretion affects a research funding portfolio. Using internal project selection data from the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), we describe how a portfolio of projects selected by individual discretion differs from a portfolio of projects selected by traditional peer review. We show that ARPA-E program directors prefer to fund proposals with greater disagreement among experts, especially if at least one reviewer thinks highly of the proposal. This preference leads ARPA-E to fund more uncertain and creative research ideas, which supports the agency's mission of pursuing novel ideas for transformational energy technology.
Description
Thesis: S.M. in Management Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2019
 
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
 
Includes bibliographical references (pages 31-34).
 
Date issued
2019
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121833
Department
Sloan School of Management
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords
Sloan School of Management.

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  • Management - Master's degree

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