Homophily in grant evaluations

Funding agencies play a central role in science by awarding grants to researchers. Grant review can be influenced by bias, including preferences for applicants who share reviewers' gender, country or citizenship. Using 37,073 applications for European Research Council grants with multiple reviews per proposal, we show that reviewers who share an applicant's country of work or citizenship award higher scores than reviewers with no such match. This effect is strongest when both country and citizenship align. Shared gender increases scores to a smaller extent. Further analyses indicate that these findings are unlikely to be driven by shared tastes or informational advantages. At the panel level, correlational evidence shows that applicants are more likely to advance past the first stage when the chair or more panel members share their country of work or citizenship. Country of work and citizenship may therefore be relevant sources of bias in international grant review.