Working Paper: NBER ID: w14577
Authors: Pierre Azoulay; Joshua S. Graff Zivin; Jialan Wang
Abstract: We estimate the magnitude of spillovers generated by 112 academic "superstars" who died pre- maturely and unexpectedly, thus providing an exogenous source of variation in the structure of their collaborators' coauthorship networks. Following the death of a superstar, we find that collaborators experience, on average, a lasting 5 to 8% decline in their quality-adjusted publication rates. By exploring interactions of the treatment effect with a variety of star, coauthor and star/coauthor dyad characteristics, we seek to adjudicate between plausible mechanisms that might explain this finding. Taken together, our results suggest that spillovers are circumscribed in idea space, but less so in physical or social space. In particular, superstar extinction reveals the boundaries of the scientific field to which the star contributes -- the "invisible college."
Keywords: spillovers; superstar scientists; collaboration; scientific output
JEL Codes: O30; O31; O43
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| death of a superstar scientist (B32) | decline in quality-adjusted publication rates of collaborators (L15) |
| death of a superstar scientist (B32) | decline in quality-adjusted publication rates of close collaborators (L15) |
| death of a superstar scientist (B32) | loss of unique ideas (O36) |
| decline in quality-adjusted publication rates of collaborators (L15) | broader implications for the scientific community (C90) |