Sharon G. Levin

Exceptional contributions to US science by the foreign-born and foreign-educated

This paper contributes to the debate on high-skilled migration byexamining whether the foreign-born and foreign-educated are disproportionatelyrepresented among individuals making exceptional contributions to science and engineering (S & E) in the U.S. Six indicators of scientific achievement areused: individuals elected to the National Academy of Sciences and/or National Academy of Engineering, authors of citation classics, authors of hot papers, the 250 most-cited authors, authors of highly cited patents, and scientistswho have played a key role in launching biotechnology firms. We do not claim that this list is exhaustive, merely illustrative.Using a variety of sources, we are able to determine the birth andeducational origin of 89.3% of the study group of over 4,500 scientists and engineers. For each indicator of scientific achievement, we test to see if the observed frequency by birth (or educational) origin is significantly differentfrom the frequency one would expect given the composition of the scientific labor force in the U.S. We find that although there is some variation by discipline, individuals making exceptional contributions to S & E in the U.S. aredisproportionately drawn from the foreign born. Only in the instance of hot papers in the life sciences were we unable to reject the null hypothesis that the proportion is the same as that in the underlying population. The most frequent country of origin in the life sciences is Great Britain followed by Germany. In the physical sciences the reverse is true. We also find that individuals making exceptional contributions are, in many instances, disproportionately foreign educated, both at the undergraduate and at the graduate level.We conclude that immigrants have been a source of strength and vitalityfor U.S. science and, on balance, the U.S. appears to have benefited from the educational investments made by other countries. We do not investigate, however, whether U.S. scientists and engineers have borne part of thecost of the inflow of foreign talent by being displaced from jobs and/or earning lower wages. Nor do we investigate the cost to the countries of origin.

The Impact of Information Technology on Academic Scientists' Productivity and Collaboration Patterns

This study investigates the impact of information technology (IT) on productivity and collaboration patterns in academe. Our data combine information on the diffusion of two noteworthy innovations in IT---BITNET and the Domain Name System (DNS)---with career-history data on research-active life scientists. We analyzed a random sample of 3,114 research-active life scientists from 314 U.S. institutions over a 25-year period and find that the availability of BITNET on a scientists campus has a positive effect on his or her productivity and collaborative network. Our findings also support the hypothesis of a differential effect of IT across subgroups of the scientific labor force. Women scientists and those working at nonelite institutions benefit more from the availability of IT in terms of overall research output and an increase in the number of new coauthors they work with than do men or individuals at elite institutions. These results suggest that IT is an equalizing force, providing a greater boost to productivity and more collaboration opportunities for scientists who are more marginally positioned in academe.

Age and Research Productivity of Academic Scientists.

Age-publishing profiles are estimated for four fields of science using data from the 1977 Survey of Doctorate Recipients. The five measures of publishing activity used allow for analysis of the sensitivity of the age-publishing relationship to output measure. Results are presented separately for graduate faculty and faculty at nongraduate departments. Although age is found to be a fairly weak predictor of performance, in physics and earth science older scientists publish less than their youngest peers and in physiology and biochemistry older scientists publish less than their middle-aged colleagues. Given the time frame of the data, the results suggest that the graying of Americas scientific community was accompanied with slowed rates of research in higher education.

Property rights and entrepreneurship in science

This paper examines the evolving relationship in science between the reward structure and entrepreneurial activity. We draw a distinction between two types of property rights. Basic science is fostered by a mechanism of reputational rights; technological advances-and the products and processes they produce - are fostered by a mechanism of proprietary rights. The two forms of property rights differ markedly in terms of the incentives they provide to share information in a timely fashion. We argue that because of a host of factors university-based scientists in certain fields are more likely to “privatize” knowledge today than in the past, trading reputational rights for proprietary rights. Events in the life sciences serve as a case study. A discussion of how privatization affects basic science follows. Although the evidence is far from complete, we conclude that the movement towards privatization may be more beneficial to product development and the scientists engaged in the activity than to basic science.

Gender Differences in the Rewards to Publishing in Academe: Science in the 1970s

This paper makes use of a unique data set fordoctoral-level biochemists, earth scientists,physicists, and physiologists to examine the question ofwhether the rewards to publishing in science are gender blind. The longitudinal nature of the data, andthe inclusion of different research outcome variables,permit the estimation of a wage-change model thatcontrols for fixed effects and productivity differences. We find little evidence that the reward processin academe during the 1970s was affected by gender. Wedo, however, find evidence that catch-up was occurring,implying that all was not well in the past for the women scientists in the study. [The1975 Survey of Doctorate Recipients indicates thatracial minority groups (Blacks, American Indians, andAsians) comprised, respectively, 5.9%, 6.3%, 2.8%, and 6.3% of the doctoral populations in physics,chemistry, earth science, and thebiosciences.]

Age and the Nobel prize revisited

This paper analyzes the relationship between age and productivity for Nobel prize winners in science during the period 1901–1992. The relationship found is field dependent as well as dependent upon the definition used to measure the age at which the ward-winning work was done. The results suggest that although it does not require extraordinary youth to do prizewinning work, the odds decrease markedly in mid-life and fall off precipitously after age 50, particularly in chemistry and physics. The discussion underscores the problem of drawing conclusions about the age structure of research by examining medians instead of the entire distribution.

Career stage, benchmarking and collective research

This paper provides an answer to the puzzle of why, in a system where collaboration is increasingly important and life-cycle models provide a modest explanation of observable outcomes, the career stage of the individual remains an important concept. We argue that three factors are key to the explanation of this paradox. First, the reward structure in science, particularly in academe, places great emphasis on the attainment of benchmarks in the context of a career. Second, the funding mechanism by which university laboratories have traditionally been supported in the US places great emphasis on the individual and often is targeted to the career stage of the individual. Third, the funding regime which has evolved in the US encourages the use of doctoral students and post doctoral students as researchers in the laboratories. This provides for a system in which a fugue of life cycles plays out in the laboratory and a means by which networks are put in place as early career scientists leave the nest and go about establishing their own laboratories or move to the laboratories of others.

MEASURES OF SCIENTIFIC OUTPUT AND THE AGE-PRODUCTIVITY RELATIONSHIP

Summary The aging of the American scientific community has generated renewed interest in the popular hypothesis that science is a young persons game. To date, the empirical evidence bearing on this question is limited and largely inconclusive. Part of the difficulty stems from the inadequacies of the models and methodologies used to investigate the relationship between age and scientific performance. Perhaps more importantly, part of the difficulty stems from the lack of a comprehensive longitudinal database containing measures of productivity for scientists in academia as well as in industry, government, and other organizations. To remedy this, our work on the social and economic determinants of scientific productivity develops quantitative measures of output and then links them with the most comprehensive longitudinal database for scientists in the United States, the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR). This chapter reports on this massive data-handling and data-analysis project with the goal of providing guidance for researchers and policy makers in the field of science and technology. Four aspects of this work are addressed. First, issues arising in measuring scientific output are discussed and four quantitative measures of output for large data sets are proposed. Second, the computer procedure used to link the productivity measures with the SDR records is described. Particular attention is focused on the reliability of the resulting output counts so that future work can benefit from the techniques developed here. Third, the measures are used to construct age-productivity profiles by sector for scientists in four fields. Finally, a case study of solid state physics using multivariate techniques is presented.

Innovation in academe: the diffusion of information technologies

This study investigates the diffusion of two early Information technologies across 1348 institutions of higher education: (1) the adoption of Because Its Time Network (BITNET), a precursor to the Internet as we know it today and (2) the adoption of the Domain Name System (DNS) with its registration of domain names, an essential feature of the modern Internet. We find that the time paths of adoption for both generally exhibit the typical S shape found for other innovations. We identify factors likely responsible for the patterns observed and in the process extend the scope of the diffusion literature by incorporating insights from the optimization behaviour of nonprofits. Using a proportional hazards framework, we find that faster adoption occurred among institutions focused on research and doctoral education as well as among select liberal arts colleges relative to nonselect colleges. Faster adoption also occurred for larger institutions, suggesting that they benefited from economies of scale. Adoption was slower for institutions having a larger percent of female faculty members. Also, there is some evidence to suggest that public institutions were faster to innovate than private institutions, while institutions in the South tended to innovate more slowly than institutions located in other regions of the country.

Capitalization of local fiscal differentials: Inferences from a disequilibrium market model☆

Abstract This study analyzes tax capitalization within the framework of a disequilibrium market model. In particular, this study examines whether local fiscal differentials influence the rate of change in neighborhood house prices over time. Local fiscal differentials existing in 1970 are found to have no influence on the rate of change in neighborhood house prices over the period 1970–1972; therefore, the study concludes that, other things being equal, these local fiscal differentials have been completely capitalized in price levels.