Explaining Heterogeneity in the Organization of Scientific Work
研究将科学家建模为追求发表最大化的主体，发现当研究助手（如博士生、博士后）的净生产力为正时，资助研究模式（企业家科学家+大团队）占优；否则动手研究模式更优，并基于调查数据验证了模型预测。
Prior studies of academic science have largely focused on researchers in life sciences or engineering. However, while academic researchers often work under similar institutions, norms, and incentives, they vary greatly in how they organize their research efforts across different scientific domains. This heterogeneity, in turn, has important implications for innovation policy, the relationship between industry and academia, the scientific labor market, and the perceived deficit in the relevance of social sciences and humanities research. To understand this heterogeneity, we model scientists as publication-maximizing agents, identifying two distinct organizational patterns that are optimal under different parameters. When the net productivity of research staff (e.g., PhD students and postdocs) is positive, the funded research model with an entrepreneurial scientist and a large team dominates. When the costs of research staff exceed their productivity benefits, the hands-on research approach is optimal. The model implies significant heterogeneity across the two modes of organizing in research funding, supply of scientific workforce, team size, publication output, and stratification patterns over time. Exploratory empirical analysis finds consistent patterns of time allocation and publication in a prior survey of faculty in U.S. universities. Using data from an original survey, we also find causal effects consistent with the model’s prediction on how negative shocks to research staff—due to visa or health problems, for example—differentially impact research output under the two modes of organization.