A Field Experiment on Search Costs and the Formation of Scientific Collaborations

Kevin Boudreau, Tom Brady, Ina Ganguli, Patrick Gaulé, Eva Guinan, Anthony Hollenberg and Karim R. Lakhani
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Tom Brady: Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Eva Guinan: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School
Anthony Hollenberg: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School
Karim R. Lakhani: Harvard Business School and NBER

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2017, vol. 99, issue 4, 565-576

Abstract: We present the results of a field experiment conducted at Harvard Medical School to understand the extent to which search costs affect matching among scientific collaborators. We generated exogenous variation in search costs for pairs of potential collaborators by randomly assigning individuals to 90-minute structured information-sharing sessions as part of a grant funding opportunity. We estimate that the treatment increases the probability of grant co-application of a given pair of researchers by 75%. The findings suggest that matching between scientists is subject to considerable friction, even in the case of geographically proximate scientists working in the same institutional context.

Date: 2017
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