TIME Webinar Series: Natalia Zinovyeva, Aalto University

The moderator will be Dr. Andreas Panagopoulos. To participate and for further information, please contact Dr. Andreas Panagopoulos

Abstract: I study the impact of the evaluators' research quality on academic evaluations. On the one hand, better-published researchers may better observe the quality of the candidates. On the other hand, they may provide worse evaluations if they can endogenously choose the level of effort dedicated to the evaluation task and they have a relatively higher opportunity cost of time. I assess this trade-off using exceptional evidence from the centralized scientific evaluations in Italy where randomly selected committees in each field decide whether applicants are qualified for academic promotion. I find that better-published researchers have a higher opportunity cost of time: their research productivity drops relatively more as a result of being assigned to a committee. The evidence also suggests that top researchers try to reduce the time they spend on evaluation tasks. Nevertheless, better-published researchers do provide better evaluations. Candidates promoted by better-published committees tend to produce more and better publications in the future. The ultimate decision on whether to increase the research quality of scientific committees depends on the relative importance the policymaker attributes to the benefits brought by improved evaluation system relative to an immediate loss of research output.