Money for Science? The Impact of Research Grants on Academic Output

This paper evaluates the impact of subsidies on the academic performance of researchers in Argentina. Academic performance is measured in terms of number of publications and in terms of impact factors in peer-reviewed journals. The performance of researchers with financially supported projects is compared with that of a control group of researchers who submitted projects accepted in terms of quality but not supported because of shortage of funds. We use non-experimental data and a difference-in-differences approach along with propensity score matching techniques, where we control for pre-programme observable attributes as well as for researchers’ time-invariant unobservable characteristics. Our findings suggest a positive and statistically significant effect of subsidy on academic performance, especially for young researchers.