Incentives and Creativity: Evidence from the Academic Life Sciences
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Manso_Incentives and.pdf
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Author(s)
Pierre, Azoulay
Graff Zivin, Joshua S.
Gustavo, Manso
Date Issued
September 2011
Journal
RAND Journal of Economics
Publisher
Rand Corporation
Citation
Azoulay, Pierre, Joshua S. Graff Zivin and Manso Gustavo. "Incentives and Creativity: Evidence from the Academic Life Sciences." RAND Journal of Economics, 42.3 (Fall 2011), pp. 527-554.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
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 Institute of Health,
which are subject to short review cycles, pre-defined 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.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
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DOI of Published Version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-2171.2011.00140.x
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-2171.2011.00140.x
