Interested in the economics of science and innovation.
krisgulati
Karma: 12
Thanks Erik!
Fascinating reframing! I hadn’t thought about it like that at all…
Yes, incredibly interesting.
Also, good seeing you here—I’m a big fan of your work!
This is fun to think about. Two thoughts popped up:
1. I wonder if it also changes researchers’ appetite for risk knowing they may have time to recover in the future if their riskier projects fail.2. Perhaps there’s also a mechanism forcing science to be more robust/credible. If my career is now 100 years long rather than 30 years, there may be a longer-term penalty for engaging in shoddy science. (This probably sits under your long-term thinking bracket).
I have always liked this post a lot. Similarly, I have always liked Matt Clancy’s post on this who takes a slightly different approach but I think complements it well https://mattsclancy.substack.com/p/the-idea-of-being-an-entrepreneur?s=r#details
Haven’t thought about this thoroughly but number of EAF/PSF users/views springs to mind as a crude proxy.
I think it’s a great question. Two papers come to mind about capture that are somewhat related. These are not directly related but get at the capture part of research to some extent:
This paper by Carrell/Figlio/Lusher captures the clubbyness in economics.
I’m really fond of this paper by Rubin and Rubin because the empirical strategy is smart.
“Like maybe you’re only allowed to be the chair of x society or editor of y journal for a fixed time period and then you’re forced to step down. Maybe something like that could be a codifiable measure of some level of capture of a field.”
I know some people who are working on something kind of like this. Happy to explore this further when we chat.
Yeah, that’s certainly true, the deaths have interesting dynamics. My advisor (Christian Fons-Rosen) is a co-author on that paper with Pierre and Josh. I’m definitely interested in exploring the area more.
I still expect EA to be more influential in 2030. I’d be interested in making a bet on this.
“If the scientists had randomly died of disease or something, instead of being deliberately kicked out, would the effect have been similar?”
This paper by Pierre, Josh, and Wang does exactly that. They look at the sudden death of ‘superstar academics’ and find a noticeable decline in their collaborators productivity.
Nice post. Yes, Fabian’s paper is brilliant. IIRC, in a separate paper, he uses the same shock to study peer effects and finds no impact, which seems completely robust but simultaneously bizarre.
I’m supposed to be studying for my final qualifying exams but talk of physical capital is too enticing…
A couple of related papers you may find interesting:Baruffaldi and Gaesller have a brilliant working paper looking at the more recent impacts of physical capital destruction. Like Fabian, they also have a great source of exogeneity—the accidental destruction of physical capital from natural disasters. The take-home is that specialised capital is particularly harmful in the long run (side note, the paper’s sheer data collection is remarkable!).
Helmers and Overman (2016) also demonstrate the large impact of physical capital using the runner-up location of the Diamond Light Source synchrotron in the UK.
I’m in the early stages of working on some ideas around the importance of physical capital. It would be good to chat at some point.
Just the person I was looking for—thanks Eric! I’ll try and get through these before we meet.