TY  - JOUR
AU  - Lazear,Edward P.
TI  - Incentives in Basic Research
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5444
PY  - 1996
Y2  - January 1996
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5444
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5444.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Edward P. Lazear
Graduate School of Business
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
Tel: 650/723-9136
Fax: 650/723-0498
E-Mail: lazear@stanford.edu
AB  - Individuals involved in basic research, like other workers, respond to incentives.  Funding agencies provide implicit incentives when they specify the rules by which awards are made.  The following analysis is an exercise in understanding incentives at an applied level.  Specific rules are examined and analyzed to determine their incentive effects.  For example, what is the effect of rewarding past effort?  What happens when a few large awards are replaced by many small awards?  How does the timing of an award affect effort?  How does an agency choose which topics to fund?  After having mapped out the responses of researchers to rules, socially optimal rules are derived.  Research incentive issues have private business analogues, and the extension to the operation of the firm is discussed briefly.
ER  -