Is science a 'market of ideas'? Not according to the economics of science. Science is competitive, but scientific competition is not market competition. This interdisciplinary volume sheds new light on many aspects of scientific competition, from the academic labor market to the constitution of science.
Is science a 'market of ideas'? Not according to the economics of science. Science is competitive, but scientific competition is not market competition. Nor is scientific competition the same as competition between universities. Scientific competition is, first of all, competition between individual scientists. Current science policies shift the boundary between scientific competition, where scientists provide public goods in the hope to acquire status among their peers, and market competition in science, where the results of research are private property protected by patents or other means, in favor of the market. However, the economic ring of the political slogans cannot conceal a serious lack of understanding of scientific competition behind the reform proposals.
Like market competition, scientific competition is highly complex, involving many different institutions-universities, markets, funding organizations, scientific journals and others-and using its own decision procedures, typically based on peer review. How do these institutions work, and how do they interact? Will academic labor markets still attract the scientific talent in the near future? How should universities decide whom to hire? Is the peer review process reliable? Can we find out what science has to tell us by letting scientists vote on the issues? Why do scientists mostly stick to the rules? This volume sheds new light on these and other aspects of science and scientific competition, with theoretical and empirical contributions from economics, law, political science, sociology, and philosophy of science.
This title was made possible in Open Access within the Knowledge Unlatched Select Round 2018 by numerous participating libraries.
Table of contents:
Max Albert: Introduction -
Paula E. Stephan: Job Market Effects on Scientific Productivity -
Bernd Fitzenberger: Comment -
Günther G. Schulze: Tertiary Education in a Federal System. The Case of Germany -
Stefan Voigt: Comment -
Gustavo Crespi/Aldo Geuna: The Productivity of UK Universities -
Christian Pierdzioch: Comment -
Michael Rauber and
Heinrich W. Ursprung: Evaluation of Researchers. A Life Cycle Analysis of German Academic Economists -
Werner Güth: Comment -
Martin Kolmar: Markets versus Contests for the Provision of Information Goods -
Roland Kirstein: Comment -
Christine Godt: The Role of Patents in Scientific Competition. A Closer Look at the Phenomenon of Royalty Stacking -
Christian Koboldt: Comment -
Nicolas Carayol: An Economic Theory of Academic Competition. Dynamic Incentives and Endogenous Cumulative Advantages -
Dominique Demougin: Comment -
Dorothea Jansen: Research Networks - Origins and Consequences. First Evidence from a Study of Astrophysics, Nanotechnology and Micro-economics in Germany -
Henrik Egbert: Comment -
Christian Seidl, Ulrich Schmidt, and
Peter Grösche: A Beauty Contest of Referee Processes of Economics Journals -
Max Albert/Jürgen Meckl: Comment -
Jesús P. Zamora Bonilla: Methodology and the Constitution of Science. A Game-theoretic Approach -
Gebhard Kirchgässner: Comment -
Christian List: Distributed Cognition. A Perspective from Social Choice Theory -
Siegfried Berninghaus: Comment
