Where Do I Stand? Assessing Researchers' Beliefs about Their Relative Productivity

Marco Bertoni, Giorgio Brunello, Daniele Checchi and Lorenzo Rocco

No 13637, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In 2017 the Italian government established the Fund to Finance Basic Research Activities – FFABR – with the purpose of assigning a 3,000 euros research grant to the most productive applicants among eligible assistant and associate professors. We show that, rather surprisingly, many low-productivity researchers applied to the program while many high-productivity ones did not. Our evidence from both a simple structural model of program participation estimated on registry data and a survey of the eligible population suggests that high-productivity researchers under-estimate their own position in the productivity distribution relative to the assignment threshold, while the opposite holds for low-productivity ones.

Keywords: overconfidence; competitive research funds; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2020-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published as 'Where do I stand? Assessing researchers' beliefs about their productivity' in: Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization, 2021, 185, 61-80

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