Project description
Information in the organisational economics of science
As uncertainty pervades even the most promising research projects, information plays a fundamental role in the organisation of science. The ERC-funded InfoEcoScience project will propose foundational tools in the economics of science through two interlinked packages concerning information and science. The first package will develop a general method for comparing information structures for decision problems with specific properties, deriving general characterisation results and applying them to the analysis of evaluation and selection mechanisms in science. The second package will develop a framework for the design of science subsidy schemes with imperfect verification. The project will characterise the optimal mix of push and pull incentives for financing knowledge creation and for aligning researchers’ incentives with social objectives.
Objective
Given the uncertainty shrouding even the most promising research projects, information plays a key role in the organization of science. The project develops foundational tools in the organizational economics of science, through two inter-linked packages:
I. Comparing Information
Researchers select questions to work on, choose sites for testing, and trim samples when analysing data. Editors select referees from a pool of potential reviewers. This package develops a general approach for comparing information structures, such as the selected experiments described above, for decision problems with certain properties. Once decision problems are restricted to a class satisfying properties such as monotonicity, more information structures can be compared than in Blackwell’s classic approach. The proposal presents some
ideas for developing general characterization results and for applying the new method to the comparison of experiments produced in a social context.
II. Supporting Science
This package develops a framework for the design of science subsidy schemes with imperfect verification. Researchers have some noisy information about the chances of success of their project and go through a costly selection process. Research proposals are evaluated by reviewers with imperfect expertise. The aim is to characterize the optimal mix of push and pull incentives for financing knowledge creation and aligning researchers incentives with social objectives. A subproject develops a structural methodology for estimating research funding models and applies the method to a unique dataset from the Research Council of Norway (RCN) covering all fields of research and containing detailed information about applicants (whether they are awarded a grant or not) as well as evaluators.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC - Support for frontier research (ERC)Host institution
20136 Milano
Italy