Seminario di Maria Yudkevich

21.09.2017

Research performance of Russian universities: the effect of the Russian University Excellence initiative 

Seminario di Maria Yudkevich, HSE-NRU, Mosca

Abstract

We estimate the effect of Russian University excellence program initiated by the Government in 2013 (Project 5-100) on research performance of leading Russian universities that got on the competitive basis a substantial financial support within this program. While the publication output of Russian universities in general increases in recent years, we estimate whether there is a significant value added from the Program that is whether the extra increase in productivity takes place in selected universities. We use econometric analysis of longitudinal data applying the linear growth model with mixed effects, with the number of publications (total number, per capita, publications in high-quality journals) as dependent variable. We demonstrate that there is a positive significant effect of the Program that appears from the very first years of its implementation – that is, universities that got financial support demonstrate the substantial steady increase in publications both measured in total numbers and per capita (including publications in top-25% journals) when compared to universities from control group.