Do collaborations enhance the high-quality output of scientific institutions? Evidence from the Italian Research Assessment Exercise

In this paper, we analyze the effects of research collaborations on the scientific output of academic institutions, drawing on data from the first official Italian research assessment exercise. We measure the scientific performance of a research unit as the number of publications that received an excellent grade in the evaluation process. Different aspects of scientific collaboration are taken into account, such as the degree of openness of a research team towards other institutions and/or countries, the frequency of co-authorships, and the average size of co-authoring teams. Using econometric models for count data, we find that greater and more frequent knowledge exchange resulting from collaboration with external or foreign colleagues increase researchers’ productivity.