Choices are frequently made from lists where there is by necessity some ordering of options. In such situations individuals can exhibit both primacy bias towards the first option and recency bias towards the last option. We examine this phenomenon in a particularly interesting context: consumer...

We investigate whether excessively optimistic beliefs may play a role in the persistent demand for doctoral and post-doctoral training in science. We elicit the beliefs and career preferences of doctoral students through a novel survey and randomize the provision of structured information on the...

To examine the drivers of innovation, this paper studies the global R and D effort to fight the deadliest diseases and presents four results. We find: (1) global pharmaceutical R and D activity-measured by clinical trials-typically follows the 'law of diminishing effort': id est the elasticity...

The advancement of the knowledge frontier is crucial for technological innovation and human progress. Using novel data from the setting of mathematics, this paper establishes two results. First, we document that individuals who demonstrate exceptional talent in their teenage years have an...

We investigate whether having an advisor of the same gender is correlated with the productivity of PhD science students and their propensity to stay in academic science. Our analysis is based on an original dataset covering nearly 20,000 PhD graduates and their advisors from U.S. chemistry...

We investigate whether having an advisor of the same gender is correlated with the productivity of PhD science students and their propensity to stay in academic science. Our analysis is based on an original dataset covering nearly 20,000 PhD graduates and their advisors from U.S. chemistry...

We reexamine the widely held belief that free availability of scientific articles increases the number of citations they receive. Since open access is relatively more attractive to authors of higher quality papers, regressing citations on open access and other controls yields upward biased...

To examine the drivers of innovation, this paper studies the global R&D effort to fight the deadliest diseases and presents four results. We find: (1) global pharmaceutical R&D activity—measured by clinical trials—typically follows the ‘law of diminishing effort’: i.e. the elasticity of...