This study examines the leverage effect of KU Leuven’s internal grants on securing external funding. A counterfactual analysis matched funded and non-funded professors, revealing a significant boost for those with low initial budgets.
Long abstract
KU Leuven's internal funding aims to support researchers in successfully applying for subsequent regional, national or international grants.
This study investigates if indeed KU Leuven's internal project grants act as a leverage on the acquisition of external funding. A counterfactual analysis compared two groups of professors: those who received an internal project (target group) and those who did not (control group). Researchers were matched using Nearest Neighbour analysis based on various categorical variables, correcting for the Matthew effect, resulting in 198 matched pairs. The methodology applied overcomes the difficulty of assessing the net effect of one particular funding source in a heterogenous funding landscape.
Paired t-tests or Wilcoxon tests with Bonferroni correction and difference-in-difference analysis indicated a significant leverage effect of the internal grants for researchers with starting budgets from other sources below 120 k€, while no significant effect was observed for those with higher initial budgets. Spearman correlation analysis showed negligible or weak correlations between initial budget size and external funding, except for the highest budget class.
The findings suggest that the internal grants effectively enhance external funding acquisition for researchers with limited initial budgets, though caution is advised due to potential unaccounted factors.
Accepted Paper
Short abstract
Long abstract
KU Leuven's internal funding aims to support researchers in successfully applying for subsequent regional, national or international grants.
This study investigates if indeed KU Leuven's internal project grants act as a leverage on the acquisition of external funding. A counterfactual analysis compared two groups of professors: those who received an internal project (target group) and those who did not (control group). Researchers were matched using Nearest Neighbour analysis based on various categorical variables, correcting for the Matthew effect, resulting in 198 matched pairs. The methodology applied overcomes the difficulty of assessing the net effect of one particular funding source in a heterogenous funding landscape.
Paired t-tests or Wilcoxon tests with Bonferroni correction and difference-in-difference analysis indicated a significant leverage effect of the internal grants for researchers with starting budgets from other sources below 120 k€, while no significant effect was observed for those with higher initial budgets. Spearman correlation analysis showed negligible or weak correlations between initial budget size and external funding, except for the highest budget class.
The findings suggest that the internal grants effectively enhance external funding acquisition for researchers with limited initial budgets, though caution is advised due to potential unaccounted factors.
Metascience Lab (III): brokering experiments
Session 1 Wednesday 2 July, 2025, -