Abstract
Under the current universal trend towards larger grant sizes in research funding systems, we focus on how large of a grant size is appropriate. We study the directional returns to scale (RTS) to assess whether current grant sizes are the most productive. We take the General Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) as an example and select three samples of physics, geography and management for an empirical study. We find that the optimal input direction and the most productive grant size scale is different for the three disciplines; based on the current grant size, physics should not expand the grant size and team size input, geography should further increase the grant size to improve performance and management should further expand the team size rather than the grant size. In this paper, we demonstrate a new method to calculate the optimal direction, which is the lowest rate of congestion, according to the characteristics of the General Program. Based on these results, we also calculate the most productive scale size. This method has certain value for project management.
Highlights
Government funding is a key scientific research resource, and research funding systems have recently become more performance-based because such funds come from common taxpayers
Based on the grants of the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC)’s General Program, this paper studies the change in directional returns to scale (RTS) in the presence of congestion and constructs a directional Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model under congestion
We focus on the change in the directional RTS under congestion of the NSFC
Summary
Government funding is a key scientific research resource, and research funding systems have recently become more performance-based because such funds come from common taxpayers. We selected data from three example disciplines physics, geography and management in 2011 to analyze and verify the change in directional RTS and the most productive input scale size. The most productive scale of the grant size input under the optimal direction is concentrated in the range [58, 61] (in units of ten thousand yuan, the same as the following), which was lower than the actual average grant size of 65.83 in 2011. In terms of the optimal direction of physics, where the two input indicators change proportionally, on the basis of both the quantity indicator and quality indicator, the grant size and team size inputs should not be further increased: other management measures should be taken to improve the performance of the project team. Increasing team size would further improve the performance
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