War and Science in Ukraine

Ina Ganguli and Fabian Waldinger
Additional contact information
Ina Ganguli: University of Massachusetts Amherst

No 402, Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series from CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition

Abstract: We discuss the impacts of the Russian invasion on Ukrainian science. Using newly collected data, we show that the war has already had significant effects on science in Ukraine: research papers produced by Ukrainian scientists declined by about 10%, approximately 5% of the most prolific scientists are publishing with a foreign affiliation, 22% of top universities have faced destruction of physical capital, and international collaborations with Russian scientists have declined by more than 40%. Drawing upon the economics of science and innovation literature, we highlight three primary channels through which wars impact science: 1) the loss of human capital, 2) the destruction of physical capital, and 3) reductions in international scientific cooperation. The evidence from the literature on the long-run effects of losing human or physical capital indicates that shocks to physical capital can be remedied more easily than shocks to human capital. Our new data also suggests that human capital shocks are the main drivers of the reduction in Ukrainian research output that has occurred since the beginning of the war. Hence, reconstruction efforts should be focused on supporting scientists to continue in the research sector and to return to Ukraine after the war has ended.

Keywords: war and science; scientific human capital; physical capital destruction; international migration; international scientific cooperation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H52 I23 I25 J44 J61 J62 O38 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-06-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-his, nep-lab and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://rationality-and-competition.de/wp-content/ ... ussion_paper/402.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: War and Science in Ukraine (2024)
Chapter: War and Science in Ukraine (2023)
Working Paper: War and Science in Ukraine (2023)
Working Paper: War and Science in Ukraine (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rco:dpaper:402

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series from CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Viviana Lalli ().