MOD: Estimating the Effect of Exposure to Superstar Scientists: Evidence from Academia and the Biopharmaceutical Sector

MOD：评估接触超级明星科学家的影响：来自学术界和生物制药领域的证据

• 批准号: 0738142
• 负责人: Joshua Graff Zivin
• 金额: $ 39.85万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-12-01 至 2011-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0738142&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: MOD; Estimating; Effect; Exposure; Superstar

By measuring the "training" effects of research grants and synergies across research efforts, this project provides significant and missing elements in the calculus behind the perennial debates about the benefits from public research and appropriate levels of funding. Measures of geographic influence also inform current policy questions about U.S. competitiveness vis-a-vis the magnetic pull that high quality research exerts on the locational choice of firms in an international context. Moreover, since part of this research explores the mechanisms through which knowledge spillovers operate, the project should generate valuable insights about the allocation of talent across organizations and how the technologies and policies that influence the flow of information between agents has important implications for the level and rate of technological innovation within the economy.The purpose of this project, therefore, is to empirically estimate the importance of spillovers from "superstar scientists" for scientific progress in the biomedical area. The study relies on a unique dataset that the investigators have assembled over the past several years. The dataset has matched publication output, NIH funding and patents for the complete roster of medical school faculty and NIH grantees between the years 1977 and 2003. The central model of this study estimates the effect that exposure to "superstar" scientists exerts has on the scientific productivity of other researchers within the academic life sciences. Exposure is assumed to be a multidimensional construct, with three distinct channels of influence: (a) co-authorship ("social distance"); (b) co-location ("geographic distance"); and (c) overlap/complementarity of research foci ("scientific distance"). Because scientists do not locate or collaborate at random, particular attention is given to the quasi-experiments that can help tease apart causal relationships from mere correlations. As part of this study, open-source software tools are developed to construct measures of social and scientific distance between individual scientists. Beyond intellectual contributions to policy debates, this project will have several additional impacts. First, the software developed to measure social and scientific distance between researchers will be useful to a wide range of scholars interested in science and technology policy. The open-source format is designed to encourage future users to modify and improve the software so that research tools in this area continue to advance. This software along with source code and user manuals will be made publicly available at no charge for use by science policy scholars and other interested parties. Second, the software resulting from this study is expected dramatically to reduce the cost of matching individual-level patent, publication and research funding data in the biosciences by making a number of cross-walk files publicly available. Finally, the findings will be disseminated through various media to a wide range of audiences, thereby facilitating an open dialogue with colleagues in the academy, as well as policy makers and firms in the biomedical industry.

通过衡量研究跨研究工作的研究补助和协同作用的“培训”效应，该项目在积极的积分中提供了关于公共研究收益和适当资金水平的多年生辩论背后的重要和缺失的要素。地理影响力的衡量标准还为当前的政策问题提供了有关美国竞争力的磁性吸引力，高质量研究在国际背景下对公司的位置选择施加了吸引力。此外，由于本研究的一部分探讨了知识溢出运作的机制，因此项目应为对跨组织的人才分配以及如何影响代理之间信息流的技术和政策产生宝贵的见解，如何对经济中的技术范围进行重要的含义。生物医学区域。该研究依靠一个独特的数据集，该数据集在过去几年中已经组装了。该数据集已与1977年至2003年之间的医学院教职员工和NIH受赠人的完整名册相匹配。这项研究的中心模型估计，对“超级巨星”科学家施加的影响对学术生命科学领域其他研究人员的科学生产力的影响估计。假定暴露是一种多维结构，具有三个不同的影响渠道：（a）共同作者（“社会距离”）； （b）共处（“地理距离”）; （c）研究焦点的重叠/互补性（“科学距离”）。由于科学家没有随机定位或合作，因此特别关注了可以帮助嘲笑因果关系与仅相关性的因果关系的准则。作为本研究的一部分，开发开源软件工具是为了构建单个科学家之间的社会和科学距离的度量。除了对政策辩论做出智力贡献之外，该项目还会产生更多的影响。首先，开发用于衡量研究人员之间的社会和科学距离的软件将对对科学和技术政策感兴趣的各种学者有用。开源格式旨在鼓励未来的用户修改和改进软件，以便该领域的研究工具继续发展。该软件以及源代码和用户手册将无需公开提供科学政策学者和其他有关方面。 其次，这项研究产生的软件可显着地降低生物科学中个人级专利，出版和研究资金数据的成本，通过公开提供许多交叉步行文件。最后，这些发现将通过各种媒体传播到广泛的受众群体，从而促进与学院的同事以及生物医学行业的政策制定者和公司进行公开对话。