Performance-based research funding: Evidence from the largest natural experiment worldwide |
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| Institution: | 1. National Research Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET). Argentina;2. Research Centre for Transformation (CENIT), Economics and Business School (EEYN), National University of San Martin (UNSAM), Argentina;3. Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Buenos Aires, Argentina;4. CONICET-Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto Interdisciplinario de Economía Política de Buenos Aires (IIEP-BAIRES), Buenos Aires, Argentina;1. Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada;2. Arison School of Business, Reichman University, Herzliya, Israel;3. Monte Ahuja College of Business, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, United States of America;1. Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China;2. Department of Information Management, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China;3. School of Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, 310058, PR China;4. Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0FS, United Kingdom;1. Waseda Business School, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan;2. Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics Business and Tourism, University of Split, Split, Croatia;1. Department of Management, Economics, and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, 32, 20133 Milan, Italy;2. Mannheim Business School, University of Mannheim, L5, 4, 68161 Mannheim, Germany;3. Department of Strategy and Innovation, Copenhagen Business School, Kilevej 14A, 2nd floor; 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark;4. Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Marstallplatz 1, 80539 Munich, Germany |
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| Abstract: | A performance-based research funding system (PRFS) is a nationwide incentive scheme that promotes and rewards university research performance through competition for government funding. The UK’s PRFS, currently the Research Excellence Framework (REF), is considered the oldest, largest and most developed payment-by-results system in academia worldwide. Surprisingly, and despite the strong criticisms, little has been done to quantitatively and casually evaluate the intended and unintended effects of the PRFSs. In this paper, we evaluate the incremental impact of the REF 2014 in the fields of Economics and Business. We use a synthetic control method to compare the performance of UK universities with their artificial counterfactual units constructed using data from US universities. Our analysis shows, on the whole, that the introduction of the REF had a significant and positive impact on the quantity and quality of the scientific research produced at UK universities. However, we do not find a significant effect on the per author measures, suggesting that the REF did not result in an increase in research productivity. We also show that the effects are more heterogeneous across universities than across academic disciplines. We do not find evidence of a shift of research focus from Economics to Business topics, as some feared. But our analysis indicates that the REF 2014 may have contributed to the concentration of research excellence in elite institutions. |
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| Keywords: | Research policy Research productivity Research Excellence Framework Performance-based research funding system Synthetic control method |
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