Despite its presumed role as an engine of economic growth, we know surprisingly little about the drivers of scientific creativity. In this paper, we exploit key differences across funding streams within the academic life sciences to estimate the impact of incentives on the rate and direction of...

The National Institute of Health (NIH), through its extramural grant program, is the primary public funder of health-related research in the United States. Peer review at NIH is organized around the twin principles of investigator initiation and rigorous peer review, and this combination has...

We present PublicationHarvester, an open-source software tool for gathering publication information on individual life scientists. The software interfaces with MEDLINE, and allows the end-user to specify up to four MEDLINE-formatted names for each researcher. Using these names along with a...

A rich literature argues that interorganizational networks foster learning and coordinated adaptation among their constituents, but embedded ties between organizations are not ubiquitous. What explains this heterogeneity? Acknowledging the influence of agency relationships within organizations...

Considerable evidence suggests that information is acquired more easily within than across firm boundaries. I explore why this is observed in the setting of clinical development. Since the mid-1980s, pharmaceutical firms have partly contracted out the operational aspects of clinical trials to...

A robust body of evidence shows that air pollution exposure is detrimental to health outcomes, often measured as deaths and hospitalizations. This literature has focused less on subclinical channels that nonetheless impact behavior, performance, and skills. This article reviews the economic...

Increased temperature-related mortality is predicted to be one of the largest contributors to future economic damages from climate change globally, with declines in cold-related deaths in some regions outweighed by increases in heat-related deaths in others. Changes in temperature could also...

Solar technologies have been associated with private and social returns, but their technological potential often remains unachieved because of persistently low demand for high-quality products. In a randomized field experiment in Senegal, we assess the potential of three types of quality...

Addressing climate change requires individual behavior change and voter support for pro-climate policies, yet surprisingly little is known about how to achieve these outcomes. In this paper, we estimate causal effects of additional education on pro-climate outcomes using new compulsory schooling...

This paper investigates the impact of a pioneering pollution reduction program, the Ecological Compensation Initiative (ECI) in China, which establishes side payments between upstream and downstream provinces along the same river. The program includes both Coasian and pay-for-performance...