Three Essays on the Economics of Science

Scientific research holds the promise of promoting economic prosperity and development, thus making it critical to understand the mechanisms that foster the production and diffu-sion of such knowledge. This dissertation comprises three empirical studies that investigate how structural changes in research environments influence scientific productivity, the diffu-sion of economic knowledge, and the career trajectories of PhD graduates. Using detailed administrative, bibliometric, and social media data as well as causal inference techniques, these studies provide new causal insights into the conditions that foster or constrain knowl-edge production and dissemination.
The first paper, When Colleges Graduate: Micro-Level Effects on Publications and Sci-entific Organization (co-authored with Olof Ejermo) investigates the change in status of three Swedish colleges to universities in 1999. This change greatly expanded the inflow of resources in the form of basic funding to the new universities. Using detailed individual data, we follow the careers of staff employed before 1999 at the treated institutions and exam-ine their scientific performance, promotion, affiliation, and coauthorship behavior after the transition to university; we compare them to that of matched sample researchers at control colleges through a difference-in-differences analysis. We find an 89% increase in publication by publishing academics, an effect driven by increased funding; however, we do not find an increased likelihood of publishing. Further, publication activity is found to be concentrated among male researchers, those working in technical sciences, and those holding research positions. The change to a university also leads to a shift toward research-enhancing prac-tices and organizations and manifests in coauthorship patterns, affiliations, and workforce composition. Together, these changes enable the new universities to begin converging to the level of established universities in terms of research productivity. Our results indicate that additional resources to institutions that historically received insufficient investment unlock the research potential of aspiring researchers.
If you have a moment, can you just confirm that the two paragraphs say the same thing?If not, can you just correct the DK version?
The second paper, Exploring the Role of Social Media in the Diffusion of Economic Research (single-authored) bridges the literatures on scientific communication and knowledge diffusion by emphasizing social media as an algorithmically curated channel. Unlike traditional platforms, it promotes research based on engagement and networks rather than formal academic structures. This shift prompts new questions about how visibility is shaped and which ideas gain traction across audiences. Therefore, in this paper investigates how social media visibility influences the diffusion of research. To do so, a data set of all National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working papers published between 2015 and 2018—covering their social media mentions as well as their bibliometric and altmetric indicators—is utilized. To estimate the causal effect of social media visibility on diffusion, an instrumen-tal variable approach that leverages the quasi-random variation in the social media posting policy of the NBER’s communication office is employed. The results indicate heterogeneity in the role social media plays in the diffusion of economic research. Increased social media visibility of working papers positively affects the likelihood that and the extent to which research is diffused into public discourse in the first year of publication (measured by blogs and news mentions) as well as within the scientific community (measured by academic cita-tions) four years post-publication. I find no effect on citations in policy documents. Lastly, the likelihood of publishing a working paper in a peer reviewed journal is found to be un-related to the social media visibility of the working paper. Thus, the results of this article provide new evidence of the role social media plays in the diffusion of economic knowledge.
The third paper, Being Your Own Master: How Constraints on Academic Freedom Af-fect Graduates’ Career Choices (co-authored with Hans Christian Kongsted and Valentina Tartari) explores the role research autonomy plays in PhD graduates’ early career decisions. “Taste for science” is generally considered a defining feature of academic research and is central in the career decisions of junior scientists. While this concept encompasses a variety of aspects related to academic work, this paper focuses on a specific component—that is, the level of autonomy enjoyed in early-career academic research. This paper examines how a reduction in research autonomy offered by academia impacted the career choices of PhD graduates and reshaped the allocation of scientific talent across sectors. Drawing on admin-istrative data encompassing the population of PhD graduates in Denmark in STEM- and health-related fields from 2011 to 2018, we exploit a policy change that reduced the research autonomy offered by academic postdoctoral positions, while leaving other sectors unaffected. We find that the policy change increased the proportion of graduates transitioning to indus-try and reduced the proportion of graduates who remained in academia, particularly when examining graduates with pre-graduation publications. Further, for those who chose indus-try positions, a shift away from high-tech industries toward medium-high-tech industries is observed, thus reflecting how the release of graduates with stronger scientific abilities influenced the distribution of talent within the private sector. These findings highlight the pivotal role of research autonomy in shaping career trajectories and provide evidence on how funding policies and autonomy provisions affect the allocation of research-inclined talent.
Together, these studies provide novel insights into how institutional policies, financial resources, and digital platforms influence scientific productivity, knowledge diffusion, and scientific workforces. By investigating these themes through robust empirical methodologies, this dissertation contributes to broader discussions on research funding, academic career pathways, and the evolving role of digital communication channels in science. The findings offer relevant implications for policymakers, universities, and funding agencies that aim to foster an environment that supports scientific knowledge production and diffusion, thereby ensuring that research talent is effectively allocated within and beyond academia.