基础研究资助逆向激励的考察

Abstract

This paper constructs indicators to measure the perverse incentives of academic researchers by matching the funding of the National Natural Science Foundation of China's general program with output information. Since 1992, the proportion of scientists involved in more than three projects simultaneously has increased from about 0 to 8%, while the proportion of unproductive scientists has decreased from 60% to 40%. Since 2007, the proportion of high-quality papers has increased rapidly from 25% to nearly 70%, while the grant and assignment rate of patents have remained at approximately 90% and 14%. Based on the funding structure reform of the general program in 2011, this study uses a continuous difference-in-differences model and finds that the reform generally presents a positive effect. The increase in funding produces a positive incentive to reduce multiple project participation, has no significant effect on unproductive authorship, increases the number of papers, patents and the proportion of high-quality papers, but reduces the patent grant rate. The mechanism analyses reveal that perverse incentives weaken the positive effect of funding. The heterogeneity results reveal that hyper-competition is one of the main reasons leading to perverse incentives; the increase in funding has stronger negative incentive effects on the more competitive institutes, disciplines, and groups of scientists.