Events

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

Contact person: Michael Rose, Ph.D.

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

In most organizations, promotions often requires self-nomination and entry into competition. However, research on gender differences in self-promotion and preference for competition suggests that this “opt-in” process might result in fewer women choosing to compete. We study whether changing promotion schemes from a default where applicants must opt in (i.e., self-nominate) to a default where applicants must opt out (i.e., those who pass a qualification threshold are automatically considered for promotion, but can choose not to be considered) will attenuate gender differences. In our first experiment, although women are less likely than men to choose competitive environments under the traditional opt-in framing, there is no gender difference when the choice to compete is described using opt-out framing. The increase in participation of women into competition is not associated with negative consequences for performance or well-being. Further, in our second experiment we show that opt-out framing does not entail penalties from evaluators making decisions about whom to hire. These results suggest that organizations could make use of “opt-out” promotion schemes as a behavioral intervention to reduce the gender gap in promotion rates and ascension to leadership positions. More generally, our study provides additional support to the promise of choice architecture to reduce disparities in organizations.

Contact person: Dr. Marina Chugunova

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

We study decision making by graduate students and entrepreneurship program participants in a variety of individual and group settings. Nascent and current entrepreneurs differ from non-entrepreneurs along several dimensions. Nascent entrepreneurs are more trustworthy than non-entrepreneurs and current entrepreneurs, and are also more likely to be overconfident. While current and nascent entrepreneurs are no more likely to choose competitive pay schemes than others, they react to competition by performing better. Current and nascent entrepreneurs are less cooperative, more patient, and more honest than non-entrepreneurs. Nascent entrepreneurs are surprisingly different than current entrepreneurs, including being far more likely to be women.

Contact Person: Dr. Marina Chugunova

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

I examine the impact of a funding shock caused by the 16-day long U.S. Federal Government shutdown in 2013 on scientific research. The timing of the government shutdown coincided with the beginning of the Arctic summer, which is the crucial albeit short period for researchers to set up their experiments and measurements in the Antarctic. This means that although the shutdown lasted for only slightly more than two weeks, its timing substantially magnified its effect on federally funded research in the Antarctic. I use information on specific research projects in the Antarctic funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that were critically affected by the shutdown: projects were either cancelled in their entirety, their start substantially delayed, often by at least an entire year, or they lost a substantial amount of data because no measurements could be taken during the year following the shutdown. My ability to identify specific projects and the individual scientists affected by the shutdown allows me to identify the causal impact of a large, exogenous funding shock on research outcomes and career trajectories of individual scientists.

Contact person: Dr. Fabian Gaessler

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room E10

Peer Recommendations, Consumption Variety, and Product Performance: Evidence from a Digital Music Platform

Speakers: Johannes Loh (ISTO)

Approximating the Standard Essentiality of Patents – A Semantics-Based Analysis

Speaker: Lorenz Brachtendorf (Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition)

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Wettbewerb, Munich, Room 313

Multiple institutional affiliations occur when an academic belongs to more than one organisation. We document an increase in multiple institutional affiliations listed by authors on scientific publications based on an analysis of more than 2.5 million publications from OECD countries (plus selected countries such as China) during the 1996-2018 period. Furthermore, we find that the increase in the share of articles with multiple affiliations is more pronounced in countries that have implemented some form of Excellence Initiative (ExIn). Publication-author-level difference-in-differences analyses show that the probability of authors listing multiple affiliations after the implementation is between 1.3 (Japan) and 10 (France) percent higher than in countries without Excellence Initiatives. Evidence on roles and motivations behind these arrangements is mainly anecdotal. We argue that multiple affiliations may present a new model for competitive edge in the highly contested research market. Reporting results from an international survey on academics in three major science nations (the UK, Germany and Japan), we find that multiple affiliations are widespread across disciplines and are used to increase access to resources, networks or know-how. Junior academics also use them to increase job prospects and income, indicative of the precarious employment conditions they may find themselves in. Additional affiliations do not seem to be a source of conflict for mid-career and senior researchers, but junior researchers may face time and other work-related conflicts due to the additional commitment. The majority of additional affiliations build on personal contacts, but institutions also proactively shape the organisational links of their staff.

Contact person: Michael Rose, Ph.D.

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Room E10

Moderation: Ansgar Glatt

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

I use newly-collected, georeferenced network panel data to study how an exogenous increase in the efficiency of exchanging knowledge affected follow-on innovation. Specifically, I examine how the introduction of inexpensive, distance-independent postage via the British Penny Postage Act of 1839 influenced the formation of links within a network of prominent British scientists. Link formation is citation-based and hence indicative of cumulative innovation. I use two-period extensions of the network formation model proposed by Graham (2017, ECMA) to identify the impact of the reform. I can distinguish between a postage reduction effect and a quality improvement effect. The model allows me to control for fixed effects for the citing and cited scientists and to take into account the existence of previous links, the efficiency of transportation, and the proximity of scientists' research areas. The model is estimated with Graham's (2017) tetrad logit estimator. (This project is work in progress.)

Contact person: Michael Rose

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

Promotions are an important component of a worker’s wage. Yet, traditional theories about the factors driving career progressions typically focus on worker-level characteristics like human capital acquisition, on learning, or on broad market-level factors like labor supply and demand. We study coworker-career spillovers that arise in firms with limited promotion opportunities. We exploit a 2011 Italian pension reform that tightened eligibility criteria for the public pension. We use administrative data on Italian private-sector and leverage cross-firm variation to isolate the effect of retirement delays among soon-to-retire workers on the promotions of their colleagues. We find evidence of career spillovers, and the patterns of these spillovers are consistent with the idea that older workers block the careers of their younger colleagues in firms with limited opportunities. Delays in retirement lead to a decrease in younger workers’ wage growth. Promotions from blue to white-collar positions fall in response to retirement delays among white-collar workers, whereas there is no effect of such delays among blue-collars. The effects are largest in firms with shrinking employment in the years leading up to the policy and negligible among fast-growing firms. We derive in a model the key features necessary to explain our results (with Giulia Bovini, Jin Li, Mateo Paradisi, and Michael Powell).

Contact Person: Dr. Rainer Widmann

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

We show that the historical rollout of public libraries increased the innovation output of recipient towns. Between 1886 and 1919, Andrew Carnegie donated $34.5 million (approximately $1 billion in 2019 dollars) to fund the construction of more than 1,500 public libraries across the United States. Drawing on a new data set based on original historical records, we identify cities that qualified to receive a library grant, applied for the program, received preliminary construction approval, but ultimately rejected Carnegie’s offer. Using the rejecting cities as a control group, we estimate the effects of Carnegie library formation on patenting activity. We provide evidence that the trends in the patenting activity in the two groups are indistinguishable before the construction of the libraries and then diverge. Cities that received grants experienced both short- and long-run gains in patenting activity.

Contact Person: Dr. Rainer Widmann