Prizes and Productivity

Knowledge generation is key to economic growth, and scientific prizes are designed to encourage it. But how does winning a prestigious prize affect future output? We compare the productivity of Fields Medal recipients (winners of the top mathematics prize) to that of similarly brilliant contenders. The two groups have similar publication rates until the award year, after which the winners’ productivity declines. The medalists begin to “play the field,” studying unfamiliar topics at the expense of writing papers. It appears that tournaments can have large postprize effects on the effort allocation of knowledge producers.

[1]  Stephanie Boehm,et al.  Chaos Making A New Science , 2016 .

[2]  Michael Monastyrsky.  Some Trends in Modern Mathematics and the Fields Medal , 2001 .

[3]  Pierre Azoulay,et al.  Incentives and Creativity: Evidence from the Academic Life Sciences , 2009 .

[4]  E. Lazear,et al.  Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts , 1979, Journal of Political Economy.

[5]  S. Scotchmer,et al.  Innovation and Incentives , 2004 .

[6]  Edward P. Lazear,et al.  The Peter Principle: A Theory of Decline , 2003, Journal of Political Economy.

[7]  Robert Phelan Langlands.  Harish-Chandra, 11 October 1923 - 16 October 1983 , 1985, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society.

[8]  Galina F. Gordukalova.  : Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States , 1997 .

[9]  Paula E. Stephan,et al.  Research Productivity over the Life Cycle: Evidence for Academic Scientists , 1991 .

[10]  Jean‐Charles Bricongne.  Do prizes in economics affect productivity , 2014 .

[11]  K. Arrow,et al.  Aspects of the theory of risk-bearing , 1966 .

[12]  Walter N. Thurman,et al.  Testing the Theory of Tournaments: An Empirical Analysis of Broiler Production , 1994, Journal of Labor Economics.

[13]  Alan J. Dubinsky,et al.  Sales managers: Marketing's best example of the peter principle? , 1999 .

[14]  Michael L. Bognanno,et al.  Do Tournaments Have Incentive Effects? , 1988, Journal of Political Economy.

[15]  Incentives, learning, task difficulty, and the Peter Principle: Interpreting individual output changes in an Organisational Hierarchy , 2012 .

[16]  H. Tropp.  The origins and history of the fields medal , 1976 .

[17]  B. Frey,et al.  Does the John Bates Clark Medal Boost Subsequent Productivity and Citation Success? , 2013, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[18]  Charles A. O'Reilly,et al.  Top Executive Pay: Tournament or Teamwork? , 1993, Journal of Labor Economics.

[19]  D. Levhari,et al.  The Effect of Risk on the Investment in Human Capital , 1974 .

[20]  G. Borjas,et al.  The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians , 2012, World Scientific Studies in International Economics.

[21]  George J. Borjas,et al.  Cognitive Mobility: Labor Market Responses to Supply Shocks in the Space of Ideas , 2012, Journal of Labor Economics.

[22]  R. W. Carter.  A Survey of the Work of George Lusztig , 2006, Nagoya Mathematical Journal.

[23]  G. Mcrobert.  Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society , 1975 .

[24]  Joseph E. Stiglitz,et al.  The Effects of Income, Wealth, and Capital Gains Taxation on Risk-Taking , 1969 .

[25]  Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States: , 1979 .