Presenter and Abstract

Paradox of Competition in Research Funding: Why Evidence on Research Performance Remains Inconclusive.

(joint with Jesús Heredia-Carroza, Luis Palma Martos and Omar Chaban-García)  

Over the past four decades, most EU countries have restructured their public research funding systems, shifting from institutional block funding towards project-based and performance-based allocation. These reforms rest largely on the New Public Management premise that competition improves research performance and the efficiency of public spending. Yet the empirical evidence remains inconclusive. Larger funding volumes are consistently associated with better research and innovation outcomes, but studies of funding modes report positive, neutral and negative effects alike. This chapter argues that this inconclusiveness is not merely empirical. It reflects conceptual, systemic and methodological mismatches in how competition is understood and analysed. We identify four interrelated mechanisms. The first concerns classification: the literature typically equates project funding with competition and institutional funding with its absence. In fact, both modes combine competitive and non-competitive elements to varying degrees, which makes funding modes imperfect proxies for competition. The second concerns conception: competition is treated as a stable property of funding instruments. It is better understood as a constructed phenomenon whose intensity, form and frequency depend on how actors, resources and evaluation processes are organised and perceived. The third concerns measurement: heterogeneous units of analysis, disciplinary scopes and performance indicators, combined with data limitations and the predominance of linear models, obscure heterogeneous and non-linear effects. The fourth concerns attribution: competition is examined mainly through funding allocation, although it also pervades publication, reputation, career progression and recognition. Taken together, these mechanisms suggest that competition in research systems is diffuse, structurally embedded in academic life, and only partially captured by funding instruments. Increasing competition in funding allocation may therefore have limited marginal effects on research and innovation outcomes. This calls for rethinking how the effects of competitive funding are conceptualised and assessed.