Regional effects of university funding: Excellence at the cost of regional disparity?

We investigate regional repercussions of the recent shift toward focusing academic excellence in German science policy. We find that the regional concentration of merit-based public research funding has increased since the late 1990s. However, it is challenging to identify the characteristics of winning and losing regions. There is some evidence indicative of advantages for regions with larger overall university size. In contrast, our results do not suggest that more urbanized regions, or regions with stronger private-sector R&D activity, benefit disproportionately from the policy shift.