title: Essays on the impact of star scientist-mobility universities, peers and stars
Creators: name: Sasidharan, Akhil
Publisher: name: University of Galway
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Business and Economics
subject: Economics
subject: small open economies (SOEs)
subject: research productivity
subject: star scientists

description: In the ever-evolving global innovation landscape, small open economies (SOEs) face a unique challenge: fostering robust research ecosystems despite limited resources. A critical strategy for SOEs is maximising the impact of "star scientists"- who can catalyse research productivity and knowledge creation. This thesis investigates the influence of star scientists within SOEs, examining their influence on departmental output, incumbent productivity, and their own research trajectory following relocation. This research sheds light on the complex dynamics at play by employing novel methodologies and analysing data from three SOEs - Denmark, Ireland, and New Zealand. The findings offer valuable insights for policymakers and academic institutions, informing strategies for star scientist recruitment, integration, and fostering vibrant research clusters that propel knowledge-driven economic growth within SOEs. The first essay investigates the impact of star arrival on departments in the SOEs. The arrival of a star scientist is expected to help increase departmental productivity. An event-study model estimates the dynamic effects of a star arrival on quality-adjusted research output at both the department and matched individual incumbent levels. The analysis considers the broader influence of star scientists, encompassing potential channels such as fostering new research norms, facilitating access to superior training and knowledge, and stimulating collaboration opportunities within the department. Building on the prior investigation into the impact of star arrivals on departmental research output, the following essay explores the specific mechanisms through which star scientists influence their peer's productivity. While co-authorship offers a clear path for knowledge exchange, this chapter sheds light on the more nuanced effects of "star help" - assistance provided by a star scientist that falls outside the traditional coauthorship framework. I leverage natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyse acknowledgement sections within a vast corpus of published papers. Employing an event-study framework with matched data, I estimate the causal effect of star help on author productivity. Furthermore, the chapter explores the influence of sustained star support, examining how ongoing engagement with a star scientist shapes an author's long-term research output. These findings provide crucial insights for policymakers and academic institutions, informing strategies for star scientist recruitment that go beyond co-authorship. While the previous essays explore the influence of star scientists on departmental productivity and incumbent output, the following essay addresses this gap in the literature by examining the research productivity of star scientists following their relocation to SOEs. I use an event-study model to isolate the causal effects of mobility on the star's productivity, comparing their performance to non-mobile star scientists within the same SOEs. This analysis explores the potential cost of mobility, investigating whether star scientists prioritise institution-building activities upon arrival, potentially at the expense of their immediate research output. Furthermore, the essay explores how career stage and scientific field may influence the impact of mobility on a star scientist's performance. By examining these dynamics, this research provides policymakers and academic institutions with evidence to support the design of star-scientist integration strategies that balance institution-building with continued research excellence from the stars themselves. The final essay investigates how the knowledge space relatedness between a star and their peers intermediates the impact on those colleagues' productivity. In particular, this chapter investigates factors that affect the "intensity" of the treatment effect. I posit a non-linear relationship between relatedness to the star and the observed productivity effect on co-located scientists. While a stronger relationship can enhance the incumbent's absorptive capacity, it might also lead to knowledge redundancy. I employ a difference-in-difference model to examine this, estimating the treatment effects for varying degrees of relatedness (proxied by my relatedness measure). Furthermore, an event-study model with coarsened exact matching is utilised to help establish causal evidence of star arrivals on incumbent scientist productivity. By disentangling these dynamics, this research offers insights for academic institutions in fostering an environment that maximises the positive spillover effects of star scientists on their colleagues.