Inefficient Allocation of Resources in Science

Abstract

Researchers’ incentives to publish in top-tier journals are examined by a theoretical model. Using incentives to deliver optimal quality of research as a benchmark, the model concludes that the former incentives result in misallocation of resources and welfare loss. The main reasons behind it are lack of unpublishable but otherwise valuable research, misalignment between effort and value of research, and suboptimal choices of research topics. A bibliographic data set is used to empirically test predictions of the model. Indeed, while choosing a field of study, researchers tend to be more focused on their ability to publish rather than on their ability to deliver valuable research. Alternative methods of evaluating research output are suggested to mitigate these problems.