Political favoritism towards resource allocation: Evidence of grants by natural science foundation in China

Zihua Liu, Sili Zhou*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

We study the effect of political power on resource allocation for knowledge production dictated by central planning in a non-market system. Our empirical results suggest that, compared to non-connected scholars, political connected (PC) scholars have 15.7% more allocation granted by the national Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). Variations in grant allocation is related to weaker institutional environments, less reputable universities, and hard-to-value project. Additional analysis suggests that access to the NSFC fund not only benefits individual PC scholars in terms of their research quality, but also brings more high-impact publications for their affiliated institution.

Original languageEnglish
Article number100866
JournalEmerging Markets Review
Volume51
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2022
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Institutional environment
  • Knowledge production
  • Political favoritism
  • Political power
  • Resource allocation

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