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生涯后，可能会选择通过进入学术界或加入生物技术或制药公司来开始他们的职业生涯。这些选择显然取决于科学家S个人对薪酬和研究自主权的偏好。然而，职业选择也受到外部限制的影响，例如研究资金的可获得性和竞争。从历史上看，公共研究经费的数额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量化证据，说明迄今在科学研究公共资助中的可变性所隐藏的成本和潜在收益。研究经费的多变性可能会导致人才分配不当，而在预算分配过程中创造更多确定性的改革可能会以更低的成本产生更大的社会效益。与此同时，研究资金的可变性可能会增加学术界和产业界之间的知识传播，对推进科学创新、改善健康和促进经济增长具有潜在的重要政策影响。公共研究经费可获得性的外生差异(无论是随着时间的推移还是跨领域的)被用来考察生物学精英博士后奖学金获得者最初的职业选择。然后，这些职业选择约束被用在一个工具变量框架中，以评估最初职业选择的长期后果，重点是专利和出版结果。此外，还将直接评估稀缺的公共研发资金在多大程度上为私营部门企业带来了积极的生产率冲击，这些企业能够更容易地从学术精英那里吸引人才，为自己的实验室配备员工。

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.