Due to technical problems during the 6th seminar, we were not able to listen to the seminar of Giulia Iori. That’s why the Florence Center for Data Science is happy to invite you again to the seminar on “Performance-based research funding: Evidence from the largest natural experiment worldwide” which is going to be held online Friday 5th of November 2021, from 2.30-3.30 pm.

The seminar will be held by Giulia Iori from the Department of Economics of the City University of London.

Register for this webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_M2w6xh0yT9OMKGcqNztFpw

Speaker: Giulia Iori – Department of Economics of the City University of London

Title: Performance-based research funding: Evidence from the largest natural experiment worldwide

Abstract: The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the main UK government policy on public research in the last 30 years. The primary aim of this policy is to promote and reward research excellence through competition for scarce research resources. Surprisingly, and despite the severe criticisms, little has been done to systematically evaluate its effects. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of the REF 2014. We exploit a large database that contains all publications in Economics, Business, Management, and Finance available in Scopus since 2001. We use a synthetic control method to compare the performance of each of the universities from the UK with counter-factual similar units in terms of past research constructed using data for US universities. We find a significant positive increase, relative to the control group, in the number of published papers, and in the proportion of papers published in highly ranked journals within the Economics/Econometrics area and the Business, Management and Finance area. Both Russell and non-Russell Group universities benefited from the REF, with the Russell Group universities experiencing an overall significant increase in the number of publications and number of publications in top journals, and the non-Russell group experiencing a significant increase in the proportion of publications in top journals in all areas. Interestingly, the non-Russell group experienced a comparatively stronger increase in the proportion of top publications in Economics/Econometrics while the Russell Group experienced a comparatively stronger increase in the proportion of top publications in Business, Management and Finance. However, we see an insignificant effect when we focus on per-author output measures indicating that growth in output was mostly achieved by an increase in the number of research active academics rather than an overall increase in research productivity.