publications

2026

1. Do Mission-Oriented Grant Schemes Shape the Direction of Science?

   Raffaele Mancuso and Anders Broström

   Research Policy, Jan 2026

   Abs DOI

   A growing body of literature has examined how applying for and winning competitive project grants affects the career trajectory of scientists in terms of productivity, quality, social networks, and knowledge. However, the role of grant schemes in shaping the direction of scientific inquiry remains poorly understood. In this study, we investigate how the research of grant recipients, rejected applicants, and a set of comparable non-applicants working in the same fields relates thematically to a set of funding calls issued by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. These calls are all of the ‘request for applications’ (RFA) type – i.e. targeting a specific type of research that the funder has identified and seeks to strengthen. We analyze the similarity between the topics embedded in applicants’ research and the ones embedded in RFA calls. Applying a matching procedure followed by a difference-in-differences design, we find that applicants increase their topic similarity with the call more than non-applicants. However, we find no significant differences between the research of funded and rejected applicants – both groups shift their research in the direction of the call at a similar rate. These results cannot be explained by differences in post-call productivity. While we do not claim to have definitively disentangled the treatment from the selection effect on this issue, our findings have important implications for science policy and for our understanding of how the formulation of RFA calls shapes the direction of scientific inquiry.

2025

1. Does AI Affect Scientific Outcomes?

   Raffaele Mancuso, Federico Munari, and Laura Toschi

   Working Paper, Jan 2025

   Abs

   Starting from 6,671 research grants awarded by the European Research Council in the period between 2008 and 2016 within FP7 and H2020 Programmes, we analyze whether AI-related grants have different productivity rates in terms of scientific outcomes (publications) as compared to a set of similar (not AI- related) grants. We define AI-related grants as projects that develop or use AI technologies to conduct scientific research. We find that the use of AI in research financed by grant funding increases the number of published papers, but those papers get published in lower quality journal and are cited less, while being more likely to becited by third-party patents. There is no effect of AI on the time it takes to publish the first paper. Our results, thus, shed new light on how AI is diffusing in the scientific context and the type of impact it can have.

2. Working from Home and Productivity: Does the Home Space Matter?

   Alessandra Migliore, Massimo Colombo, Cristina Rossi-Lamastra, and 1 more author

   Submitted to Organization Science, Jan 2025

   Abs

   This study investigates whether and how home spaces influence knowledge workers’ productivity during work from home (WFH). We integrate architectural insights on home interiors with organizational research on WFH and organizational spaces to conceptualize the home as the combination of physical and social structures. We theorize that these structures combine to form three distinct task environments – dedicated, repurposed, and impromptu workspaces – which differentially shape productivity of WFH through control over interactions and the work environment. Leveraging the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural quasi-experiment, and analyzing data on 4,981 STEM academics in Italy, we compared the changes in the scientific productivity of academics who substantially increased the time spent WFH with those who did not under three spatial arrangements. Our findings demonstrate that the use of dedicated workspaces mitigates the decline in productivity caused by WFH compared to other spatial arrangements, while an impromptu workspace overall disrupts productivity. Crucially, this space-related productivity effect only applies when homeworkers live with others, suggesting that the home space influences productivity via an interpersonal mechanism. Namely, the dedicated space shields against nonwork interactions and, being socially constructed, facilitates the acknowledgment by others of a space as a designated area for work. Our study advances scholarship on the organization of WFH, organizational spaces, nonwork relationships, and the interdisciplinary dialogue between organization science and architecture. It also has important implications for how homeworkers, organizations, architects, and policymakers navigate the complexities of WFH.

2023

1. 

   Topic Choice, Gendered Language, and the under-Funding of Female Scholars in Mission-Oriented Research

   Raffaele Mancuso, Cristina Rossi-Lamastra, and Chiara Franzoni

   Research Policy, Jan 2023

   Abs DOI Bib PDF

   We investigate the participation of male and female applicants to a competition for research funding, using an original dataset with detailed information on both successful and unsuccessful applicants to 21 calls by a mission-oriented funding agency. We use this information to construct a fictitious pool of 277,464 potential applicants and to model their probability to submit an application. We find that, even after controlling for productivity, quality of research, seniority, years of career discontinuity, number of prior applications, affiliation, and ethnicity, women were still less likely to apply than men. The lower likelihood of females to apply was not explained by the use of masculine language in the text of the calls. Instead, women’s research interests were more distant from the topics of the calls than men’s. Topic proximity fully mediated female penalization in the likelihood to apply for research funding. These results are an important heads-up, in view of the increasing focus of governments in mission-oriented programs.

   @article{paper2,
     title = {Topic Choice, Gendered Language, and the under-Funding of Female Scholars in Mission-Oriented Research},
     author = {Mancuso, Raffaele and Rossi-Lamastra, Cristina and Franzoni, Chiara},
     date = {2023-07-01},
     journal = {Research Policy},
     volume = {52},
     number = {6},
     pages = {104758},
     year = {2023},
     issn = {0048-7333},
     doi = {10.1016/j.respol.2023.104758},
     url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733323000422},
     urldate = {2023-03-28},
     langid = {english},
     keywords = {Female penalty,Grant funding,Masculine language,Mission-oriented research,Topic mismatch},
     dimensions = {true},
   }