Training the Scientific Workforce: Does Funding Mechanism Matter?

A National Institutes of Health (NIH) taskforce recently recommended decreasing the number of graduate students supported on research assistantships, and instead favoring traineeship and fellowship funding mechanisms. Using instrumental variables estimation with survey data collected from U.S. PhD-granting biomedical sciences departments and their newly-minted PhDs, we find that increases in these programs' NIH-funded traineeships and fellowships do significantly increase programs' total graduate enrollments, particularly of female students. However, PhDs who were funded primarily as research assistants are significantly more likely to take research-focused jobs in the U.S. scientific workforce after they graduate, as compared to PhDs who were primarily supported as trainees or fellows. The suggested policy changes thus may have unintended, negative consequences for scientific workforce participation.

Are graduate students rational? Evidence from the market for biomedical scientists.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget expansion from 1998 through 2003 increased demand for biomedical research, raising relative wages and total employment in the market for biomedical scientists. However, because research doctorates in biomedical sciences can often take six years or more to complete, the full labor supply response to such changes in market conditions is not immediate, but rather is observed over a period of several years. Economic rational expectations models assume that prospective students anticipate these future changes, and also that students take into account the opportunity costs of their pursuing graduate training. Prior empirical research on student enrollment and degree completions in science and engineering (S&E) fields indicates that "cobweb" expectations prevail: that is, at least in theory, prospective graduate students respond to contemporaneous changes in market wages and employment, but do not forecast further changes that will arise by the time they complete their degrees and enter the labor market. In this article, we analyze time-series data on wages and employment of biomedical scientists versus alternative careers, on completions of S&E bachelor's degrees and biomedical sciences PhDs, and on research expenditures funded both by NIH and by biopharmaceutical firms, to examine the responsiveness of the biomedical sciences labor supply to changes in market conditions. Consistent with previous studies, we find that enrollments and completions in biomedical sciences PhD programs are responsive to market conditions at the time of students' enrollment. More striking, however, is the close correspondence between graduate student enrollments and completions, and changes in availability of NIH-funded traineeships, fellowships, and research assistantships.

Market Size and Innovation: Effects of Medicare Part D on Pharmaceutical Research and Development.

Recent evidence suggests that Medicare Part D increased prescription drug use among seniors, and increased pharmaceutical firms' revenues from sales. Previous studies also indicate that increases in market size induce pharmaceutical innovation. This paper assesses the impact of the Medicare Part D legislation on pharmaceutical research and development (R&D), using time-series data on the number of drugs entering preclinical and clinical development by therapeutic class and phase. We find that the passage and implementation of Medicare Part D is associated with significant increases in pharmaceutical R&D for therapeutic classes with higher Medicare market share.

Does targeted, disease-specific public research funding influence pharmaceutical innovation?

Public funding for biomedical research is often justified as a means to encourage development of more (and better) treatments for disease. However, few studies have investigated the relationship between these expenditures and downstream pharmaceutical innovation. In particular, although recent analyses have shown a clear contribution of federally funded research to drug development, there exists little evidence to suggest that increasing targeted public research funding for any specific disease will result in increased development of drugs to treat that disease. This paper evaluates the impact of changes in the allocation of U. S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) extramural research grant funding across diseases on the number of drugs entering clinical testing to treat those diseases, using new longitudinal data on NIH extramural research grants awarded by disease for years 1975 through 2006. Results from a variety of distributed lag models indicate that a sustained 10 percent increase in targeted, disease-specific NIH funding yields approximately a 4. 5 percent increase in the number of related drugs entering clinical testing (phase I trials) after a lag of up to 12 years, reflecting the continuing influence of NIH funding on discovery and testing of new molecular entities. In contrast, we do not see evidence that increases in NIH extramural grant funding for research focused on specific diseases will increase the number of related treatments investigated in the more expensive, late-stage (phase III) trials.

Challenges to Value-Enhancing Innovation in Health Care Delivery: Commonalities and Contrasts with Innovation in Drugs and Devices.

Limiting the growth of health care costs while improving population health is perhaps the most important and difficult challenge facing U.S. health policymakers. The role of innovation in advancing these social goals is controversial, with many seeing innovation as a major cause of cost growth and many others viewing innovation as crucial for improving the quality of care and health outcomes. The authors argue that mitigating the tension between improving health and controlling costs requires more-nuanced perspectives on innovation. More specifically, they argue that policymakers should carefully distinguish between innovative activities that are worth their social costs and activities that are not worth their social costs and try to encourage the former and discourage the latter. The article considers innovation in drugs, devices, and methods of delivering health care, with particular attention to delivery.