Publications
Sexual Misconduct, Accused Scientists, and Their Research (with Marina Chugunova and Michael Rose)
Review of Economics and Statistics, September (2025): 1-29
Media Coverage: Nature Career Feature – Shrouded in Secrecy
Abstract:
Does the scientific community sanction sexual misconduct? Using a sample of scientists at U.S. universities involved in substantiated cases of sexual misconduct that became public, we find that their prior work is cited less after the allegations become known. The effect weakens with distance in the coauthorship network, suggesting that researchers primarily learn about misconduct through their peers. Among the closest peers, male authors react more strongly. In male-dominated fields, the effects on citations appear muted. Accused scientists are more likely to leave academic research, to move to non-university institutions, and to publish less.
Motives, Gender, and Experience: Performance Effects in Crowdsourcing Contests (with Jonas Heite and Karin Hoisl)
Former title: Ability Differences and Performance in Crowdsourcing Contests
Strategy Science, September (2025)
Abstract:
Our study examines how individual characteristics—economic versus achievement-based motives, gender, and experience—moderate the “performance revision effect” in tournament-based crowdsourcing competitions. This effect refers to a phenomenon in which contestants reduce their effort when competing against significantly higher-ability opponents. Using data from Topcoder, a leading crowdsourcing platform, we conducted a quasiexperimental study with 1,677 coders in 38 single-round matches. Our regression discontinuity design exploits Topcoder’s skill-based divisions to assess contestants’ responses to differing opponent abilities. The results confirm the performance revision effect, revealing an average performance decline of 20% when contestants face higher-ability opponents. Moreover, female and more experienced participants show a stronger response to the performance revision effect than their male and less-experienced peers. Our findings contribute to the crowdsourcing literature by highlighting the boundary conditions of the performance revision effect and by quantifying the performance implications of contest designs for different contestants, allowing platform operators to make data-driven cost-benefit decisions about contest design to mitigate performance losses.
Immigrant inventors and local income taxes: evidence from Swiss municipalities
Journal of Public Economics, Issue 219 (2023): 104822
Online Appendix
Abstract:
This paper studies the relationship between local personal income tax rates and the attractiveness of municipalities as residential locations for immigrant inventors in Switzerland. Exploiting sharp differences in top income tax rates across state borders, I find an elasticity of the probability that an inventor takes residence in a municipality with respect to the top net-of-tax rate of around 3.2. Additional evidence suggests that inventors’ residential location choices are consequential for the localization of entrepreneurial activity and local knowledge spillovers.
The behavioral additionality of government research grants
International Journal of Industrial Organization, Volume 93 (2024): 103045
Abstract:
There are different forms of public support for industrial R&D. Some attempt to increase innovation by prompting firms to undertake more challenging projects than they would otherwise do. Access to a dataset from one such program, the Austrian Research Promotion Agency, allows me to examine the effect of research grants on firms’ patenting outcomes. My estimates suggest that a government research grant increases the propensity to file a patent application with the European Patent Office by around 12 percentage points. Stronger effects appear for more experienced firms of advanced age. Additional evidence indicates that grants induce experienced firms to develop unconventional patents and patents that draw on knowledge novel to the firm. I interpret the findings in a “exploration vs. exploitation” model, in which grants are targeted at ambitious projects that face internal competition from more conventional projects within firms. The model shows that this mechanism is more salient in experienced firms, leading to a stronger response in behavior for this group of firms.
Working Papers
Cross-border Commuters and Knowledge Diffusion (with Gabriele Cristelli)
Reject and Resubmit at Management Science
Abstract:
Patents disclose knowledge, yet this disclosure is often insufficient for the knowledge to be put into practice and used for cumulative innovation. Firms rely on workers possessing tacit knowledge or specific skills to effectively build on the ideas of others. In this study, we examine the effects of expanding Swiss firms’ access to the German labor market on the diffusion of knowledge developed in Germany to Switzerland. We investigate the impact of a reform implemented in 2002, which eliminated the restrictions Swiss firms previously faced in hiring German cross-border commuters. We find that following the reform’s implementation, German patents originating from locations within close commuting distance to the Swiss-German border are more heavily cited by Swiss applicants. Moreover, we observe an increase in the number of new Swiss patents that are textually similar to patents from the German border region. Knowledge diffusion effects are particularly pronounced for cumulative innovation at an intermediate technological distance to the original German invention. Such inventions introduce at least one new technology field of application while having at least one common field. Additionally, we find that the effects are concentrated in fields where Switzerland is relatively closer to the knowledge frontier than the neighboring German regions.
Relationship-specific risks in scientific training and advisor’s hold-up power (with Bruce Weinberg and Enrico Berkes)
Abstract:
In STEM, graduate students and postdocs work in apprenticeship-like arrangements in which extensive powers are conferred to their senior faculty advisor. This paper proposes a test for “hold-up power”, which leverages the deaths of senior faculty members to examine the extent to which scientific trainees rely on (their relationship with) specific seniors to complete their degree, maintain employment and access funding. We rely on data from UMETRICS, which allows us to link nascent researchers to their senior peers through wage payments on joint research projects, before any publications or dissertations can be observed. Our preliminary findings suggest that, depending on the extent of their prior relationship-specific investment with the deceased, graduate students suffer large reductions in their propensity to graduate. Postdocs lose employment on research projects and funding for equipment and capital. Our findings point to tremendous relationship-specific risks for nascent researchers.
Draft available upon request
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