Policy Research
at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

Economist eyes effects of scientific research

Paula Stephan's career as an internationally recognized economist has been defined largely by studying the careers of other researchers.

For the past two decades, Stephan has studied various ways in which the work of scientists affects the U.S. economy.

"Science is one of the fundamental sources of growth in the economy," said Stephan, economics professor and associate dean of the Andrew Young School. "Economists should study science for a couple of reasons - it's a major contributor to growth and will become even more important to growth, and it has this interesting reward system - priority - that doesn't depend on the market to get people to produce and share knowledge. That's particularly interesting to economists, since we spend lots of time being concerned about the market's failure to provide public goods."

A labor economist, Stephan's interest in the economics of science was spurred in 1980 by a National Science Foundation colleague's suggestion that the aging American professoriate, combined with the poor labor market for newly minted Ph.D.'s following the Vietnam War, could have long-term effects on the nation's scientific productivity. She and applied microtheorist Sharon Levin of the University of Missouri-St. Louis soon began an NSF-funded study of the relationship between age and productivity of scientists using data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients - and subsequently laid the groundwork for 20 years of research in the field.

In a recent study, the pair found that a disproportionate number of the United States' top scientists aren't American-grown. Although the numbers vary by discipline, an examination of more than 3,000 members of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, and authors of major scientific papers, indicated that the foreign-born and foreign-educated are disproportionately represented among individuals making exceptional contributions to science and engineering in the United States.

"Our research shows that the United States has benefited from the inflow of foreign-born talent and that this talent was more likely to have been educated abroad than one would have predicted," wrote Stephan and Levin.

The influx is changing the face of American science, the researchers said. In 1980, fewer than 20 percent of U.S. scientists with doctoral degrees were foreign born. By 1990, that pool had grown to 25 percent.

Stephan and Levin admit that their findings do not resolve the immigration debate concerning whether the inflow of foreign scientists discourages and crowds out native-born talent from careers in science and engineering.

"It remains to be determined whether native-born talent is disadvantaged by this inflow and, if so, whether the benefits outweigh the costs," they said.

Measuring scientific spillover

Stephan and University of Florida economics professor Jim Adams recently received a $510,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to examine the links between universities, firms and industries. The three-year study is expected to measure the "spillover" effects of scientific knowledge on corporate and industrial productivity as well as productivity in the academic sector.

"The real goal is to get much better estimates of how scientific research in one university and field affects research in other universities and fields, as well as how it affects productivity at the company level and at the aggregate industry level," said Stephan, whose work also has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Exxon Education Foundation, NATO and the U.S. Department of Labor.

Stephan serves on several NSF committees, including the Study Panel for Science and Engineering Workforce Data 2000, the Societal Dimensions of Engineering, Science and Technology Panel, and the Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering. She also has served on a number of National Research Council committees, including the Committee on Dimensions, Causes and Implications of Recent Trends in Careers of Life Scientists.

RELATED READING: "Are the Foreign Born a Source of Strength for U.S. Science," with co-author Sharon Levin, Science, 285, #5431, Aug. 20, 1999, pp. 1213-1214; "The Knowledge Production Function: Lessons from Biotechnology," with co-authors Richard Hawkins and David Audresch, International Journal of Technology Management. Vol. 10, Nos. 1&2, 2000, pp. 165-178; "The Changing Rewards to Science: The Case of Biotechnology," with co-author Stephen Everhart, Small Business Economics, Vol. 10, No. 2, March 1998, pp. 141-151; "Bioinformatics: Does the U.S. System Lead to Missed Opportunities in Emerging Fields? A Case Study," with co-author Grant Black, Science and Public Policy, Vol. 26, No. 6, December 1999, pp. 382-392; "The Economics of Science," Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XXXIV, September 1996, pp. 1199-1235.

Photo above: EXAMINING SCIENCE: Andrew Young School Associate Dean Paula Stephan, a labor economist, looks at the careers of scientists and the effects of scientific research on the economy.