IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/respol/v49y2020i5s0048733320300639.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public funding and the ascent of Chinese science: Evidence from the National Natural Science Foundation of China

Author

Listed:
  • Hu, Albert G.Z.

Abstract

We investigate the role of public funding in the rapid ascent of Chinese science by examining the impact of a major upgrade of a funding program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2011. Using research grant level data and a difference-in-differences estimator, we found that the more generous funding resulted in higher research output, measured by the number of publications, the number of citation-weighted publications, the number of journal impact factor-adjusted publications, and the maximum journal impact factor. This belies significant variation in the impact of the change in funding by researcher characteristics: 1) less-established researchers benefit more from the funding upgrade; 2) scientific fields that are more likely to be financially constrained benefited more; and 3) researchers from less-prestigious research institutions made more productive use of the additional funds. Finally, we found that the funding upgrade has led to increasing collaboration with researchers from top science-producing foreign countries for the less-prestigious institutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Hu, Albert G.Z., 2020. "Public funding and the ascent of Chinese science: Evidence from the National Natural Science Foundation of China," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(5).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:respol:v:49:y:2020:i:5:s0048733320300639
    DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2020.103983
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733320300639
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.respol.2020.103983?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Park, Hyunwoo & Lee, Jeongsik (Jay) & Kim, Byung-Cheol, 2015. "Project selection in NIH: A natural experiment from ARRA," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(6), pages 1145-1159.
    2. Payne A. Abigail & Siow Aloysius, 2003. "Does Federal Research Funding Increase University Research Output?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-24, May.
    3. Richard Freeman & John Van Reenen, 2009. "What If Congress Doubled R&D Spending on the Physical Sciences?," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 9, pages 1-38, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. repec:adr:anecst:y:1998:i:49-50:p:05 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Philippe Aghion & Mathias Dewatripont & Jeremy C. Stein, 2008. "Academic freedom, private‐sector focus, and the process of innovation," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(3), pages 617-635, September.
    6. Philippe Aghion & John Van Reenen & Luigi Zingales, 2013. "Innovation and Institutional Ownership," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(1), pages 277-304, February.
    7. Jaffe, Adam B, 1989. "Real Effects of Academic Research," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(5), pages 957-970, December.
    8. David H. Autor, 2003. "Outsourcing at Will: The Contribution of Unjust Dismissal Doctrine to the Growth of Employment Outsourcing," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(1), pages 1-42, January.
    9. Jacob, Brian A. & Lefgren, Lars, 2011. "The impact of research grant funding on scientific productivity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9), pages 1168-1177.
    10. Adam B. Jaffe, 2002. "Building Programme Evaluation into the Design of Public Research-Support Programmes," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 18(1), pages 22-34, Spring.
    11. Zvi Griliches, 1958. "Research Costs and Social Returns: Hybrid Corn and Related Innovations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(5), pages 419-419.
    12. Jane Qiu, 2010. "Publish or perish in China," Nature, Nature, vol. 463(7278), pages 142-142, January.
    13. Ashish Arora & Alfonso Gambardella, 2010. "The Impact of NSF Support for Basic Research in Economics," NBER Chapters, in: Contributions in Memory of Zvi Griliches, pages 91-115, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Pierre Azoulay & Joshua S. Graff Zivin & Gustavo Manso, 2011. "Incentives and creativity: evidence from the academic life sciences," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 42(3), pages 527-554, September.
    15. Averch, Harvey A., 1989. "Exploring the cost-efficiency of basic research funding in chemistry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 165-172, June.
    16. Adams, James D. & Black, Grant C. & Clemmons, J. Roger & Stephan, Paula E., 2005. "Scientific teams and institutional collaborations: Evidence from U.S. universities, 1981-1999," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 259-285, April.
    17. Levin, Sharon G & Stephan, Paula E, 1991. "Research Productivity over the Life Cycle: Evidence for Academic Scientists," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(1), pages 114-132, March.
    18. Jason Gush & Adam Jaffe & Victoria Larsen & Athene Laws, 2018. "The effect of public funding on research output: the New Zealand Marsden Fund," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(2), pages 227-248, May.
    19. David Cyranoski, 2018. "Chinese leaders create science mega-ministry," Nature, Nature, vol. 555(7697), pages 425-426, March.
    20. James D. Adams & Zvi Griliches, 1998. "Research Productivity in a System of Universities," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 49-50, pages 127-162.
    21. Jerry G. Thursby & Marie C. Thursby, 2002. "Who Is Selling the Ivory Tower? Sources of Growth in University Licensing," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 48(1), pages 90-104, January.
    22. Zhou, Ping & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2006. "The emergence of China as a leading nation in science," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 83-104, February.
    23. repec:adr:anecst:y:2005:i:79-80:p:04 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wensheng Xiao & Haojia Kong & Lifan Shi & Valentina Boamah & Decai Tang, 2022. "The Impact of Innovation-Driven Strategy on High-Quality Economic Development: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-20, April.
    2. Peixin Duan, 2022. "How large of a grant size is appropriate? Evidence from the National Natural Science Foundation of China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(2), pages 1-14, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Katrin Hussinger & João N. Carvalho, 2022. "The long-term effect of research grants on the scientific output of university professors," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(4), pages 463-487, April.
    2. Daniel Chudnovsky & Andrés López & Martín Rossi & Diego Ubfal, 2006. "Evaluating a Program of Public Funding of Scientific Activity. A Case Study of FONCYT in Argentina," OVE Working Papers 1206, Inter-American Development Bank, Office of Evaluation and Oversight (OVE).
    3. Kim, Jin-Yeong, 2016. "The Impact of Government Support of Graduate Schools on the Research Productivity of Professors and Students," KDI Journal of Economic Policy, Korea Development Institute (KDI), vol. 38(2), pages 63-85.
    4. Rachel Heyard & Hanna Hottenrott, 2021. "The value of research funding for knowledge creation and dissemination: A study of SNSF Research Grants," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-16, December.
    5. Wang, Jian, 2016. "Knowledge creation in collaboration networks: Effects of tie configuration," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 68-80.
    6. Saul Lach & Mark Schankerman, 2008. "Incentives and invention in universities," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(2), pages 403-433, June.
    7. Annita Nugent & Ho Fai Chan & Uwe Dulleck, 2022. "Government funding of university-industry collaboration: exploring the impact of targeted funding on university patent activity," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(1), pages 29-73, January.
    8. Marco Cozzi, 2020. "Public Funding of Research and Grant Proposals in the Social Sciences: Empirical Evidence from Canada," Department Discussion Papers 1809, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    9. Ayoubi, Charles & Pezzoni, Michele & Visentin, Fabiana, 2019. "The important thing is not to win, it is to take part: What if scientists benefit from participating in research grant competitions?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 84-97.
    10. Yu, Nannan & Dong, Yueyan & de Jong, Martin, 2022. "A helping hand from the government? How public research funding affects academic output in less-prestigious universities in China," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(10).
    11. ONISHI Koichiro & OWAN Hideo, 2020. "Heterogenous Impacts of National Research Grants on Academic Productivity," Discussion papers 20052, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    12. Nicolas CARAYOL & Marianne LANOË, 2017. "The Impact of Project-Based Funding in Science: \r\nLessons from the ANR Experience," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2017-04, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).
    13. Corsini, Alberto & Pezzoni, Michele, 2023. "Does grant funding foster research impact? Evidence from France," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4).
    14. Alexander Whalley & Justin Hicks, 2014. "Spending Wisely? How Resources Affect Knowledge Production In Universities," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(1), pages 35-55, January.
    15. Tania Babina & Alex Xi He & Sabrina T. Howell & Elisabeth Ruth Perlman & Joseph Staudt, 2020. "The Color of Money: Federal vs. Industry Funding of University Research," NBER Working Papers 28160, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Baruffaldi, Stefano H. & Marino, Marianna & Visentin, Fabiana, 2020. "Money to move: The effect on researchers of an international mobility grant," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(8).
    17. Park, Hyunwoo & Lee, Jeongsik (Jay) & Kim, Byung-Cheol, 2015. "Project selection in NIH: A natural experiment from ARRA," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(6), pages 1145-1159.
    18. Anckaert, Paul-Emmanuel & Cassiman, David & Cassiman, Bruno, 2020. "Fostering practice-oriented and use-inspired science in biomedical research," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(2).
    19. Fabian Waldinger, 2016. "Bombs, Brains, and Science: The Role of Human and Physical Capital for the Creation of Scientific Knowledge," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(5), pages 811-831, December.
    20. Charles Ayoubi & Michele Pezzoni & Fabiana Visentin, 2017. "The Important Thing is not to Win, it is to Take Part: What If Scientists Benefit from Participating in Competitive Grant Races?," GREDEG Working Papers 2017-27, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Science policy; Basic scientific research; Public funding; China;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O38 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:respol:v:49:y:2020:i:5:s0048733320300639. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/respol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.