The impact of subsidies on researcher’s productivity: Evidence from a developing country

Abstract

In this article we perform an impact evaluation of a programme that provides ex post subsidies to researchers in Paraguay. The analysis spans across the first 2 years following the programme (short-run). Ex post subsidies are prevalent in Latin America; however, the analysis of their effects has received little attention in the literature. Thanks to the availability of data coming from electronic CVs of applicants, we are able to analyse the impact of the programme through dimensions of researchers’ productivity that have been mostly overlooked previously. For example, we are able to use technical production, own education, other researchers’ training, and other dimensions of the bibliographic production that are different to published articles. We also provide impact estimations on quantity and quality of publications based on more traditional sources of data. We find some positive impacts of the programme. However, some of the results are not robust to alternative methods of estimation.