Homophily in Grant Evaluations

We study whether homophily plays a role in grant evaluation processes. Relying on more than 37,000 grant applications from the European Research Council, we find causal evidence for small effects of homophily related to gender, but quantitatively more significant homophily related to citizenship and country of work, with the largest estimates if both citizenship and country align between applicant and reviewer. In addition, applicants are more likely to proceed to the final evaluation round if they share country or citizenship with the panel chair or with a large fraction of panel members. We conclude that homophily challenges the objective evaluation of proposals, and country of work and citizenship arise as new relevant group characteristica.