Reducing product diversity in higher education.

Public systems of higher education have recently attempted to cut costs by providing financial incentives to institutions who reduce the diversity of their programs. We study the profit and welfare effects of reducing product diversity in higher education, against the background of a funding system reform in Flanders (Belgium). We find that dropping duplicated programs at individual institutions tends to be socially undesirable, due to the limited fixed cost and variable cost savings and the students’ low willingness to travel to other institutions. Furthermore, we find that the financial incentives offered to drop programs may be very ineffective, leading to both undesirable reform and undesirable status quo. These findings emphasize the complexities in regulating product diversity in higher education, and serve as a word of caution towards the various decentralized financial incentive schemes that have recently been introduced.Participation; Product; Diversity;

Top research productivity and its persistence. A survival time analysis for a panel of Belgian scientists.

The paper contributes to the debate on cumulative advantage effects in academic research by examining top performance in research and its persistence over time, using a panel dataset comprising the publications of biomedical and exact scientists at the KU Leuven in the period 1992-2001. We study the selection of researchers into productivity categories and analyze how they switch between these categories over time. About 25% achieves top performance at least once, while 5% is persistently top. Analyzing the hazard to first and subsequent top performance shows strong support for an accumulative process. Rank, gender, hierarchical position and past performance are highly significant explanatory factors.Economics of science; Effects; Factors; Hazard models; Performance; Persistence; Processes; Productivity; Research; Research productivity; Researchers; Scientists; Selection; Studies; Time;

Reducing product diversity in higher education

Public systems of higher education have recently attempted to cut costs by providing financial incentives to institutions who reduce the diversity of their programs. We study the profit and welfare effects of reducing product diversity in higher education, against the background of a funding system reform in Flanders (Belgium). We find that dropping duplicated programs at individual institutions tends to be socially undesirable, due to the limited fixed cost and variable cost savings and the students’ low willingness to travel to other institutions. Furthermore, we find that the financial incentives offered to drop programs may be very ineffective, leading to both undesirable reform and undesirable status quo. These findings emphasize the complexities in regulating product diversity in higher education, and serve as a word of caution towards the various decentralized financial incentive schemes that have recently been introduced.product diversity, higher education

Participation and schooling in a public system of higher education.

We analyze the determinants of participation (whether to study) and schooling (where and what to study) in a public system of higher education, based on a unique dataset of all eligible high school pupils in an essentially closed region (Flanders). We .nd that pupils perceive the available institutions and programs as close substitutes, implying an ambiguous role for travel costs: they hardly aspect the participation decisions, but have a strong impact on the schooling decisions. In addition, high school background plays an important role in both the participation and schooling decisions. To illustrate how our empirical results can inform the debate on reforming public systems, we assess the effects of tuition fee increases. Uniform cost-based tuition fee increases achieve most of the welfare gains; the additional gains from fee di¤erentiation are relatively unimportant. These welfare gains are quite large if one makes conservative assumptions on the social cost of public funds, and there is a substantial redistribution from students to outsiders.

The great divide in scientific productivity. Why the average scientist does not exist.

We use a quantile regression approach to estimate the e¤ects of age, gender, research funding, teaching load and other observed characteristics of academic researchers on the full distribution of research performance, both in its quantity (publications) and quality (citations) dimension. Exploiting the panel nature of our dataset, we estimate a correlated random-e¤ects quantile regression model, accounting for unobserved heterogeneity of researchers. We employ recent advances in quantile regression that allow its application to count data. Estimation of the model for a panel of biomedical and exact scientists at the KU Leuven in the period 1992-2001 shows strong support for our quantile regression approach, revealing the di¤erential impact of almost all regressors along the distribution. We also …nd that variables like funding, teaching load and cohort have a di¤erent impact on research quantity than on research quality.economics of science; research productivity; quantile regression; count data; random effects;

In pursuit of excellence : essays on the organization of higher educationand research.

This thesis consists of four empirical studies that analyze the higher education sector from its two main dimensions: education and research. The first two essays model the demand for higher education and simulate the effects of tuition fee increases and reductions in supply diversity on demand on general welfare. The final two essays analyze the productivity determinants of academic scientists, looking at both the star scientists and the lower tail of the distribution. Essay 1 analyzes the determinants of participation (whether to study) and schooling (where and what to study) in a public system of higher education, based on a unique dataset of all eligible high school pupils in an essentially closed region (Flanders). We find that pupils perceive the available institutions and programs as close substitutes relative to the outside option, implying an ambiguous role for travel costs: they hardly affect the participation decision, but have a strong impact on the schooling decision. To illustrate how our empirical results can inform the debate on reforming public systems, we assess the effects of tuition fee increases. Uniform cost-based tuition fee increases achieve most of the welfare gains; the additional gains from fee differentiation are relatively unimportant. These welfare gains are quite large under conservative assumptions on the social cost of public funds, and there is a substantial redistribution from students to outsiders. Essay 2 studies the profit and welfare effects of reducing supply diversity, against the background of a funding system reform in Flanders (Belgium). We find that the social desirability of cutting programs at institutions is limited to less than 10% of the cases (first-year undergraduate education), due to the students' low willingness to travel and relatively limited variable and fixed cost savings. Furthermore, the originally proposed version of the new funding system would often miss its purpose. In general, it gives an incentive to cut the smaller programs. However, we find that for the programs where cuts are undesirable, the system nevertheless encourages to cut 30-60% of the cases. Furthermore, for the minority of cases where program cuts are actually desirable, we find it provides the wrong incentive for up to half of the cases. These findings emphasize the complexities in regulating the diversity of supply in higher education, and serve as a word of caution towards the various other measures to cut supply diversity that have recently been introduced. Essay 3 contributes to the debate on cumulative advantage effects in academic research, by examining top performance in research productivity and its persistence over time, using a panel dataset comprising the publications of biomedical and exact scientists at the KU Leuven in the period 1992-2001. The data set allows taking into account factors like gender, age, cohort, rank, promotion, seniority, teaching load and access to research funding. About one quarter of the scientists in the sample achieve top performance at least once in the observation period, with six out of a hundred scientists being persistently top. Analyzing the selection and hazard to first and subsequent top performance, shows support for an accumulative process with rank, hierarchical position, access to funding and past performance as highly significant explanatory factors. Also gender is a consistent factor in explaining both top performance and its persistency. Essay 4 uses a quantile regression approach to estimate the effects of age, gender, funding, teaching load and other observed characteristics of academic researchers on the full distribution of research output. We employ recent advances in quantile regression that allow its application to count data, i.e. numbers of publications and citations. We account for unobserved heterogeneity of researchers by estimating a random-effects model, exploiting the panel nature of our dataset. Estimation of the model for a panel of biomedical and exact scientists at the KU Leuven in the period 1992-2001 shows strong support for our quantile regression approach, revealing the differential impact of regressors along the distribution. We also find that variables like funding, teaching load and cohort have a different impact on research quantity than on research quality.

Internal basic research, external basic research and the technological performance of pharmaceutical firms.

We evaluate the impact of basic research on pharmaceutical firms’ technological performance, distinguishing between internal basic research and the exploitation of external basic research findings. We find that firms increase their performance by engaging more in internal basic research, in particular if basic research is conducted in collaboration with university scientists. The exploitation of external basic research improves performance, while the magnitude increases with firms’ involvement in internal basic research. Hence, internal basic research and the exploitation of external basic research are complements, suggesting that internal basic research provides firms with the skills to exploit external basic research more effectively.basic research; industrial innovation; pharmaceutical industry;

RIO Country Report 2015: Belgium

The 2015 series of RIO Country Reports analyse and assess the policy and the national research and innovation system developments in relation to national policy priorities and the EU policy agenda with special focus on ERA and Innovation Union. The executive summaries of these reports put forward the main challenges of the research and innovation systems.JRC.J.6-Innovation Systems Analysi

RIO Country Report 2016: Belgium

The 2016 series of the RIO Country Report analyses and assesses the development and performance of the national research and innovation system of the EU-28 member States and related policies with the aim of monitoring and evaluating the EU policy implementation as well as facilitating policy learning in the Member States.JRC.B.7-Knowledge for Finance, Innovation and Growt