The impact of research funding on academic outputs: Evidence from the personnel data in China

This paper is one of the first attempts that analyse the ­effectiveness of national research funding based on personnel data in ­developing countries. We employ the personnel data from 1998 to 2015 in the field of economics and management of a prestigious Chinese ­university to study the effect of receiving national research funding on the quantity and quality of subsequent academic research. We find that receiving funding can indeed improve the quantity and quality of publications. However, although an increase in the amount of funding can improve the quantity of publications, it does not have a statistically significant effect on the research quality. These results are mostly consistent with the goal-setting ­mechanism, as the amount of funding is usually positively ­correlated with the expected number of research outputs specified in the application file as a binding contract. We also find that national funding can help researchers find more suitable co-authors and publish more co-authored works, even after the funding period ends, thus generating a long-term collaboration effect.