@nellgluckman @OppInsights By money I mean research support. Here’s a helpful chart from @AAAS . The Federal government spends about $75B on research each year via @NSF , @NIH , and other agencies. Funding for social science barely registers on this chart…

@nellgluckman @OppInsights @aaas @NSF @NIH ...and if you break down social science into disciplines econ gets only a fraction of that tiny social science pie. A couple hundred million, no better than rounding error. About one-quarter of one percent of all Federal research dollars. And it's not trending upward.

@nellgluckman @OppInsights @aaas @NSF @NIH To put this in further perspective, according to the @BLS_gov there are roughly the same number of faculty in physics and economics at postsecondary institutions nationwide. Physics gets more than ten times the amount of Federal research funding.

@nellgluckman @OppInsights @aaas @NSF @NIH @BLS_gov Every year, the Federal government hands out somewhere around $400k in funding per physics faculty member. Ditto for engineering. In environmental science it’s more like $900k. Math and chemistry it’s $90-100k. Economics? Somewhere around $20k.

@nellgluckman @OppInsights @aaas @NSF @NIH @BLS_gov In spite of the paltry Federal support for econ research, economists are paid better than their colleagues in STEM disciplines, particularly in the upper tail of the distribution.

@nellgluckman @OppInsights @aaas @NSF @NIH @BLS_gov Now, research in the sciences and engineering is expensive relative to social science. There’s a lot more expensive specialized equipment involved. Nonetheless, the economics of hiring STEM faculty are profoundly different than econ faculty.

@nellgluckman @OppInsights @aaas @NSF @NIH @BLS_gov STEM faculty come reasonably close to funding themselves through their research enterprise. A university without a lot of wealth can host a strong department. Econ, by contrast, is a “prestige” department, a loss leader.

@nellgluckman @OppInsights @aaas @NSF @NIH @BLS_gov This leads to scenarios like @UofIllinois , a strong but not particularly wealthy flagship institution, hosting top-ten physics and chemistry departments, but not competing in the same echelon in econ. It’s highly rational.

@nellgluckman @OppInsights @aaas @NSF @NIH @BLS_gov @UofIllinois Now, take a look at where @OppInsights gets its money. It’s like a who’s-who of generous billionaires: Gates, Zuckerberg, Bloomberg. Speaking as a researcher who has received billionaire funding, it’s doled out very differently than NSF or NIH.

@nellgluckman @OppInsights @aaas @NSF @NIH @BLS_gov @UofIllinois Federal grants are made through open requests for proposals, following a rigorous peer-review process. Basically, any investigator with a strong idea has a shot at Federal funding. Some funding is earmarked for early-career investigators, or those from under-represented groups.

@nellgluckman @OppInsights @aaas @NSF @NIH @BLS_gov @UofIllinois Oligarchs, by contrast, typically don’t use RFPs or a peer-review process. They give money to researchers they like. Where Federal funding supports a broad “middle class” of investigators, oligarch funding is steered toward “superstars.”

@nellgluckman @OppInsights @aaas @NSF @NIH @BLS_gov @UofIllinois Sometimes the superstars turn around and spread this wealth, but not typically through their own open calls for proposals. They basically set up their own private club. The economics ecosystem is dotted with these private clubs, among them @NBERpubs , @JPAL , IZA, and @OppInsights .

@nellgluckman @OppInsights @aaas @NSF @NIH @BLS_gov @UofIllinois @nberpubs @JPAL All this is bad for science. It yields a scenario where good ideas come to fruition only if they occur to the “right” people. There are two strategies for doing better: 1) Lobby the Federal government for better social science funding. Which some of us do!

@nellgluckman @OppInsights @aaas @NSF @NIH @BLS_gov @UofIllinois @nberpubs @JPAL 2) Steer private philanthropy in the direction of less elitist grantmaking practices. Issue open calls for proposals. Use review panels. To bring this all back to @OppInsights , they didn’t create this ecosystem. They are thriving in it, though.

@nellgluckman @OppInsights @aaas @NSF @NIH @BLS_gov @UofIllinois @nberpubs @JPAL If @OppInsights want to change things, they could help by biting the hands that feed them. And here I don’t mean their host universities. I mean the wealthy elite who fund them.

@nellgluckman @OppInsights @aaas @NSF @NIH @BLS_gov @UofIllinois @nberpubs @JPAL That’s an action fundamentally against their self-interest. But ultimately this is the question for any researcher who hopes to promote greater social mobility while comfortably ensconced in settings designed to thwart that mobility. What are you doing there? /end

@JakeVigdor @nellgluckman @OppInsights This is great. Buuuut - institutions like IES specifically don’t want innovative research. They want replications. Billionaires are ballsy and make risky bets.