• 2025
• Working Paper

Fundamental knowledge in the life sciences has consequential implications for medicine and subsequent medical innovations. Using publications in leading life science journals to measure fundamental knowledge, we document large agglomerations in the institutions where it is discovered and a robust correlation between knowledge and subsequent citations in patents. We assess whether the institution where research is produced affects the output of scientists by using a scientist-mover design, which compares annual research output before and after a move for the same scientist. Between 50 60% of a scientist’s research output is attributable to the institution where they work, and two thirds of this effect is driven by the presence of star researchers. The magnitude of these effects has not decreased in more recent time periods, in the wake of technologies that make cross-institution collaborations easier, nor is it larger for moves to larger agglomerations, nor concentrated in particular scientific fields. We discuss the implications of these findings for research allocations in science and scientists’ leaving one institution for another.

• 2025
• Working Paper

We develop a method to estimate producers’ productivity beliefs in settings where output quantities and input prices are unobservable, and we use it to evaluate allocative efficiency in the market for science. Our model of researchers’ labor supply shows that their willingness to pay for their two key inputs, funding and time, reveals their underlying productivity beliefs. We estimate the model’s parameters using data from a nationally representative survey of research-active professors from all major fields of science. We find that the distribution of research productivity is highly skewed. Using these estimates, we assess the market’s allocative efficiency by comparing actual input allocations to optimal allocations given various objectives. Overall, the market for science is moderately efficient at maximizing output and researchers’ utility: actual input levels are positively correlated with the optimal levels implied by the model. However, the wedge between researchers’ actual and optimal input levels is often significant and difficult to predict. Our estimates imply that total budgets would need to increase by roughly 40% under actual allocations in order to achieve the same growth in scientific output that we predict under alternative allocations of the current budget. Scaling to the population level, this equates to billions of dollars in funding—there are substantial gains from developing new ways of identifying and supporting productive scientists.

• 2025
• Working Paper

Social movement pressures can lead organizations to concede and improve social performance to avoid disruption costs, but we theorize that such responses evoke concession costs that prompt organizations to shift resources and attention from other social domains whose performance suffers. We test this theory by examining tradeoffs global supply chain factories make when responding to local worker activism, evidenced by varying compliance with multinational enterprises’ (MNEs’) labor standards. Analyzing audit data from thousands of Chinese suppliers, we find that suppliers in cities with more wage-related activism increased compliance with MNEs’ wage-related standards but tempered improvement in occupational health and safety. This tradeoff is more pronounced in factories with unions and high-powered productivity incentives, suggesting internal governance structures shape how suppliers respond to social movement pressures.