Research

Top Researchers on Scientific Committees: Decision Outcomes, Peer Dynamics, and Opportunity Costs

Joint with Natalia Zinovyeva

Paul David Best Junior Paper Award, Workshop on the Organisation, Economics and Policy of Scientific Research (2026)

Science disproportionately relies on top researchers to evaluate the work of others, potentially diverting their scarce time from producing new knowledge. Using random assignment of evaluators in Italy’s national academic promotion system, we show that committees with better-published members select candidates who subsequently receive more citations and experience faster career advancement. Better-published evaluators also change committee dynamics: they raise peers’ effort and induce convergence toward more impact-focused evaluation criteria, consistent with reputational pressures. Committee service, however, carries opportunity costs. Serving on a two-year committee reduces evaluators’ own publication output by about 20% of a typical year’s production, with particularly large effects for highly productive researchers working in small teams. These findings suggest that evaluation systems that account for peer effects and heterogeneous opportunity costs – through committee design and service allocation – can improve evaluation efficiency while reducing the overall burden on science.

Presentations:

• 2026 — Workshop on the Organisation, Economics and Policy of Scientific Research, Politecnico di Milano; NBER Summer Institute, Science of Science Funding*
• 2025 — UK Department for Education; PhD Seminar, Erasmus School of Economics; Brown Bag Seminar, Erasmus School of Economics

Female Promotions and the Academic Pipeline: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Joint with Manuel Bagues, Giulia Vattuone, Natalia Zinovyeva

We study how promotion decisions shape female scientists careers’ and the academic pipeline, using data from 4,000 Spanish university departments. In Spain’s centralized habilitación system, national qualification committees effectively controlled access to senior academic ranks during 2002–2008. We identify exogenous variation in promotions using the random assignment of evaluators to these committees: applicants evaluated by a coauthor or colleague were more likely to qualify and be promoted. We document two main findings. First, failing at this career gate has more persistent consequences for women: female Associate Professor candidates who narrowly miss qualification are 57 percentage points less likely to be promoted fifteen years later, compared with 29 for men. Second, when women qualify, the effects extend beyond their own careers: their departments subsequently promote more women, graduate more female PhD students, and produce more female PhD graduates who remain active in research and advance in academia.

Presentations:

• 2026 — Research on Monday, Erasmus School of Economics; Tinbergen Institute Opening Conference: Science for Society; KTI-KRTK; 4th Diversity and Human Capital Workshop, University of Exeter; KTI-KRTK Nyári Műhely; European Association of Labour Economists Conference, Barcelona*
• 2025 — PhD Seminar, Erasmus School of Economics; PhD Seminar, Tinbergen Institute

Opportunities or Exploiting Opportunities? Evidence on Gender Gaps in Professional Networks from academia

Women tend to have smaller professional networks which may increase gaps in labor-market outcomes. Gender differences in networks can arise for two reasons: (i) unequal opportunities to meet potential connections or (ii) differences in forming new ties conditional on meeting. I distinguish between these margins using the random assignment of researchers to national evaluation committees in Italian academia. Serving together on a committee increases the probability of coauthoring during the subsequent eight years by 40 percent relative to other pairs who could have been assigned to the same committee but were not. Conditional on meeting, women are just as likely to form new collaborations as men, and same-gender pairs are not more prone to collaborate than mixed-gender pairs. These results suggest that observational gender differences in network size and gender-homophily are unlikely to arise due to gender-specific preferences. Instead, unequal access to opportunities for interaction is a more plausible explanation.

Presentations:

• 2025 — Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Workshop on the Organisation, Economics and Policy of Scientific Research, University of Strasbourg; 10th Summer School on Data and Algorithms for ST&I Studies, KU Leuven; PhD Seminar, Erasmus School of Economics
• 2024 — Network Economics Day, Tinbergen Institute

Diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in Dutch firms

Joint with Anne Boring, Josse Delfgaauw