| Abstract: |
A peer review is used ubiquitously in hiring, promotional, and evaluation
decisions, within academia and beyond. It is usually conducted to allocate
limited resources, such as the budget of a funder or the pages of a journal.
With limited capacity, a peer review may lead to negatively biased evaluations
precisely because approving a peer’s worthy project lowers the chance that a
referee’s own project will be approved. I show that limited capacity is
inconsistent with a hypothesis that the decision-maker’s policy is to
stimulate efforts, and I discuss possible decision-maker motivations that
could lead to a limited capacity policy. |