TY - JOUR
KW - Asymmetric and Private Information
KW - Mechanism Design, National Government Expenditures and Health, Health: General, Higher Education
KW - Research Institutions, Technological Change: Government Policy
AU - Danielle Li
AB - Evaluators with expertise in a particular field may have an informational advantage in separating good projects from bad. At the same time, they may also have personal preferences that impact their objectivity. This paper examines these issues in the context of peer review at the US National Institutes of Health. I show that evaluators are both better informed and more biased about the quality of projects in their own area. On net, the benefits of expertise weakly dominate the costs of bias. As such, policies designed to limit bias by seeking impartial evaluators may reduce the quality of funding decisions.
BT - American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
DA - 2017/04
DO - 10.1257/app.20150421
IS - 2
LA - en
N2 - Evaluators with expertise in a particular field may have an informational advantage in separating good projects from bad. At the same time, they may also have personal preferences that impact their objectivity. This paper examines these issues in the context of peer review at the US National Institutes of Health. I show that evaluators are both better informed and more biased about the quality of projects in their own area. On net, the benefits of expertise weakly dominate the costs of bias. As such, policies designed to limit bias by seeking impartial evaluators may reduce the quality of funding decisions.
PY - 2017
SP - 60
EP - 92
ST - Expertise versus Bias in Evaluation
T2 - American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
TI - Expertise versus Bias in Evaluation: Evidence from the NIH
UR - https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20150421
VL - 9
Y2 - 2024-08-27
SN - 1945-7782
ER -