Star Arrival Effects on Scientists’ Productivity with Different Intensity of Relatedness to the Star

There is increasing interest in star recruitment policies as a means to catalyze the development of clusters in targeted research areas. While there is growing evidence of positive star-arrival effects, we know less about how relatedness to the arriving star intermediates the size of the productivity effect on co-located peers. In the context of scientific productivity, we use various relatedness indexes to estimate this “intensity of treatment effect,” where the intensity is proxied by the relatedness measure. Recognizing that greater relatedness can both increase absorptive capacity and exacerbate potential knowledge redundancy, we allow for a possible non-linearity between the relatedness measure and the observed productivity effect on incumbent scientists. We find evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship. Interestingly, an asymmetric relatedness measure calculated from the perspective of the star provides a better fit to the data than one calculated from the perspective of the incumbent scientist, which we interpret as indicating the importance of the star’s engagement with their new colleagues. Our results are robust to using various relatedness measures based on journal and keyword overlap between the treated scientist and the star. We discuss the possible implications for the design of star recruitment policies