The CU Boulder chapter of Phi Beta Kappa is pleased to be hosting a public lecture by PBK Visiting Scholar Paula Stephan, an economist whose research focuses on the economics of science and the careers of scientists and engineers.
Who: Open to the public
What: Paula Stephan on “How Economics Shapes Science”
When: Monday, Feb. 18, 5:30–7 p.m.
Where: Eaton Humanities, Room 150
Her lecture focuses on how economics shapes science as practiced at public research organizations by examining how incentives and costs affect the practice of science.
She begins with examples of how scientists respond to different types of publishing incentives that have been implemented by various countries and the rise in income inequality among U.S. faculty members. The lecture also examines how incentives vary by field of training, discussing, for example, how the patenting activity of biomedical scientists relates to the desire to have an impact on society while that of engineers relates to the motives of advancement and curiosity.
The role of costs in the practice of science is also discussed, ranging from the multimillion-dollar cost of high-end equipment to the (not insignificant) cost of buying and maintaining mice. It closes with a discussion of how incentives and costs affect the way in which university labs are staffed and the extreme dependence that has emerged in staffing labs with graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in the United States.
Stephan is a professor of economics at Georgia State University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Recent work examines how bibliometric measures discourage risk taking in science, the relationship between international mobility and scientific productivity, how gender pairing between student and advisor relates to the productivity of PhD recipients and the economics of the postdoctoral position. Her research has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation.
She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; member of the Board of Reviewing Editors, Science; and was named ScienceCareers’ first Person of the Year in 2012. She has published numerous journal articles and two books, How Economics Shapes Science (2012) and Striking the Mother Lode in Science (1992). Learn more about Stephan here.
