I’m completely puzzled by the choice of state as the independent variable. The organization of the U.S. university system does not follow state lines in any straightforward way, so that choice of state can show in the causal mechanism only through its correlation with some concrete elements in the organization of the system. However, from what I see, the paper doesn’t even speculate on how exactly this could work, and the assumption that there exists competition among researchers at state level strikes me as utterly absurd.
Availability bias? The US is conveniently divided up into 50 chunks, and a lot of statistical information is aggregated at state level, so there’s a great convenience for researchers in dividing things up that way, whether it makes sense or not.
I’m completely puzzled by the choice of state as the independent variable. The organization of the U.S. university system does not follow state lines in any straightforward way, so that choice of state can show in the causal mechanism only through its correlation with some concrete elements in the organization of the system. However, from what I see, the paper doesn’t even speculate on how exactly this could work, and the assumption that there exists competition among researchers at state level strikes me as utterly absurd.
Availability bias? The US is conveniently divided up into 50 chunks, and a lot of statistical information is aggregated at state level, so there’s a great convenience for researchers in dividing things up that way, whether it makes sense or not.