The consequences of competition: simulating the effects of research grant allocation strategies

Researchers have to operate in an increasingly competitive environment in which funding is becoming a scarce resource. Funding agencies are unable to experiment with their allocation policies since even small changes can have dramatic effects on academia. We present a Proposal-Evaluation-Grant System (PEGS) which allows us to simulate different research funding allocation policies. We implemented four Resource Allocation Strategies (RAS) entitled Communism, Lottery, Realistic, and Ideal. The results show that there is a strong effect of the RAS on the careers of the researchers. In addition the PEGS investigated the influence of the paper writing skill and the grant review errors.

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