The size of research funding: Trends and implications

Abstract

This paper examines the role of grant size in research funding. There is an increasing focus in a number of countries on larger grant forms, such as centers of excellence, and in some cases also increases in the size of individual project grants. Among the rationales for this are economies of scale in research and redistribution of resources towards top researchers in order to increases scientific productivity and pathbreaking research. However, there may potentially also be negative impacts of increasing funding size, and there is limited empirical evidence on the actual consequences of increases in size. In this paper we critically examine the rationales behind increases in funding size and the empirical evidence on the impacts of size in research funding. Our goal here is to present a more coherent view of the potential impacts of these initiatives, both positive and negative, that can help inform funding design.