Early Career Choice, Funding Variation and Scientific Output

年轻的生命科学研究人员在完成博士后学徒期后，可以选择进入学术界，或加入生物技术或制药公司开始他们的职业生涯。 这些选择显然取决于科学家。的个人偏好的工资和程度的研究自主权。然而，职业选择也受到外部制约因素的影响，如研究资金的可用性和竞争。 从历史上看，公共研究资金的数量随着时间的推移而变化，反映了国会的优先事项。该项目将提供第一个定量证据，说明迄今为止公共科学研究资金的可变性所带来的隐藏成本和潜在利益。研究经费的可变性可能导致人才的错误分配，而在预算分配过程中创造更大确定性的改革可以以更低的成本产生更大的社会效益。与此同时，研究经费的变化可能会增加学术界和工业界之间的知识传播，对推动科学创新、改善健康和促进经济增长具有潜在的重要政策影响。外源性的变化，在研究的公共资金的可用性（无论是随着时间的推移和跨领域）被用来检查在生物学的精英博士后奖学金的收件人最初的职业选择。这些职业选择的限制，然后使用工具变量框架，以估计这最初的职业选择的长期后果，重点是专利和出版成果。还将直接评估公共研发资金的稀缺在多大程度上对私营部门公司的生产率产生了积极的冲击，因为这些公司更容易从学术精英中招募实验室工作人员。

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.