This article is devoted to modelling of incentives for researchers by the methods of agent-based modelling. Istratov’s model of the happiness economics was taken as a basis for the model in this article. Agents-individuals of Istatov model was divided into two types: agents-researchers that develop new knowledge and agents-imitators that imitate scientific work but don’t develop new knowledge. Researchers are characterized by different level of talent, both types of agents invest their labor, the research institutes separate real research work from imitation and the quality of this separation is characterized by the coefficient of imperfection. Emulation experiments enabled us to develop interesting outcomes, in particular we found situations where real researchers can be substituted by imitators in the research institutes.