When funding public goods, resources are often allocated via mechanisms that resemble contests, especially in the case of scientific grants. A common critique of these contests is that they induce “too much” effort from participants working on applications. However, this paper emphasizes the...

This paper examines trends in the aggregate productivity of the pharmaceutical sector over the past three decades. We incorporate Ricardo's insight about demand-driven productivity in settings of variable scarce resources, and estimate the industry's responsiveness to changes in demand over this...

In markets where consumers seek expert advice regarding purchases, firms seek to influence experts, raising concerns about biased advice. Assessing firm-expert interactions requires identifying their causal impact on demand, amidst frictions like market power. We study pharmaceutical firms'...

We examine editors’ influence on the scientific content of academic journals by unpacking the role of three major forces: journals’ missions, aggregate supply of and demand for specific topics, and scientific homophily via editorial gatekeeping. In a sample of top biomedical journals, we...

We study how firms target and influence expert intermediaries. In our empirical context, pharmaceutical manufacturers provide payments to physicians during promo- tional interactions. We develop an identification strategy based on plausibly exogenous variation in payments driven by differential...

This paper identifies the degree to which scientists are willing to change the direction of their work in exchange for resources. Data from the National Institutes of Health are used to estimate how scientists respond to targeted funding opportunities. Inducing a scientist to change their...

Extensive research has documented the immediate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists, yet it remains unclear if and how such impacts have shifted over time. Here we compare results from two surveys of principal investigators, conducted between April 2020 and January 2021, along with...

We examine trends in the productivity of the pharmaceutical sector over the past three decades. Motivated by Ricardo's insight that productivity and rents are endogenous to demand when inputs are scarce, we examine the industry's aggregate R&D production function. Using exogenous demand shocks...