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New Public Management helps universities and research institutions to perform in a highly competitive research environment. Evaluating publicly financed research improves transparency, helps in reflection and self-assessment, and provides information for strategic decision making. In this paper we provide empirical evidence using data from a Collaborative Research Center (CRC) on financial inputs and research output from 2005 to 2016. After selecting performance indicators suitable for a CRC, we describe main properties of the data using visualization techniques. To study the relationship between the dimensions of research performance, we use a time fixed effects panel data model and fixed effects Poisson model. With the help of year dummy variables, we show how the pattern of research productivity changes over time after controlling for staff and travel costs. The joint depiction of the time fixed effects and the research project's life cycle allows a better understanding of the development of the number of discussion papers over time.

The management of universities requires data on teaching and research performance. While teaching quality can be measured via student performance and teacher evaluation programs, the connection of research outputs and their antecedents is much harder to check, test and understand. To inform research governance and policy making at universities, the paper clarifies the relationship between grant money and research performance. We examine the interdependence structure between third-party expenses (TPE), publications, citations and academic age. To describe the relationship between these factors, we analyze individual level data from a sample of professorships from a leading research university and a Scopus database for the period 2001 to 2015. Using estimates from a PVARX model, impulse response functions and a forecast error variance decomposition, we show that an analysis at the university level is inappropriate and does not reflect the behavior of individual faculties. We explain the differences in the relationship structure between indicators for social sciences and humanities, life sciences and mathematical and natural sciences. For instance, for mathematics and some fields of social sciences and humanities, the influence of TPE on the number of publications is insignificant, whereas the influence of TPE on the number of citations is significant and positive. Corresponding results quantify the difference between the quality and quantity of research outputs, a better understanding of which is important to design incentive schemes and promotion programs. The paper also proposes a visualization of the cooperation between faculties and research interdisciplinarity via the co-authorship structure among publications. We discuss the implications for policy and decision making and make recommendations for the research management of universities.

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