A new study of the European Research Council (it was originally intended to encourage risk-taking in science but maybe it has not)

From Tyler Cowen.

"I find these results not entirely surprising:

We examine whether the ERC selected researchers with a track record of conducting risky research. We proxy high-risk by a measure of novelty in the publication records of applicants both before and after the application, recognizing that it is but one dimension of risk. We control and interact the risk measure with high-gain by tracking whether the applicant has one or more top 1% highly cited papers in their field. We find that applicants with a history of risky research are less likely to be selected for funding than those without such a history, especially early career applicants. This selection penalty for high-risk also holds among those applicants with a history of high-gain publications.

And this:

To test whether receiving a long and generous prestigious ERC grant promotes risk taking, we employ a diff-in-diff approach. We find no evidence of a significant positive risk treatment effect for advanced grantees. Only for early career grantees do we find that recipients are more likely to engage in risky research, but only compared to applicants who are unsuccessful at the second stage.

You will note that the ERC was originally intended to encourage risk-taking in science.  Here is the full paper by Reinhilde Veugelers, Jian Wang, and Paula Stephan.  It is good to see the economics of science making so much progress as of late."