Expertise versus Bias in Evaluation: Evidence from the NIH
研究美国国立卫生研究院的同行评审，发现评审专家在自己领域内既有信息优势也有个人偏好，但专长的好处总体上略大于偏见的代价，因此限制偏见可能降低资助决策质量。
Evaluators with expertise in a particular field may have an informational advantage in separating good projects from bad. At the same time, they may also have personal preferences that impact their objectivity. This paper examines these issues in the context of peer review at the US National Institutes of Health. I show that evaluators are both better informed and more biased about the quality of projects in their own area. On net, the benefits of expertise weakly dominate the costs of bias. As such, policies designed to limit bias by seeking impartial evaluators may reduce the quality of funding decisions.