David Popp, professor of public administration and international affairs and Caroline Rapking Faculty Scholar in Public Administration and Policy, has been awarded a $349,380 grant by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. His research project is titled “Does Government Funding Change What You Do? The Effects of Funding on the Direction and Impact of Academic Energy Research.” For it he is joined by Daniel Acuna, an assistant professor in Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies.

Popp’s research will examine how government funding influences the direction of clean energy research, focusing on whether increased government spending attracts more researchers to the field, or merely substitutes for other funding sources within the field. Using machine learning, his interdisciplinary team will combine textual and regression analyses to answer three questions: (1) Do scientists change the focus of their research in response to targeted government funding opportunities?(2) If so, what types of calls for funding best attract new researchers? (3) Do researchers new to a field contribute novel ideas? Do they produce more highly cited research?

Popp, who is also a senior research associate in the Center for Policy Research, specializes in environmental economics and the economics of technological change. His work, which has been funded by, among others, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, has been published in journals including American Economic Review, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and Nature Energy. 

04/23/20