Are awards in academia useful?
This answer on Mathoverflow summarizes a study on the "productivity" of past winners of Fields medals (the most important award in mathematics; it is given each four years to four mathematicians under 40 years old).

The study is Prizes and Productivity: How Winning the Fields Medal Affects Scientific Output (2013), George J. Borjas and Kirk B. Doran.

TL;DR: The paper analyzes the output of 47 Field winners and 43 mathematicians of comparable level (often, people who were rumored to be "in the shortlist"). After winning the medals, their statistics diverge visibly. Field winners write about 20% fewer papers than non-winners, in the post-medal period, and seem to have slightly lower productivity, in general. However, there is another significant effect: they tend to enlarge their views and extend their research interests extend to other areas of mathematics, much more than non-winners, who tend to continue in the same area (25% vs. 10% probability of "cognitive mobility"). This necessarily comes with a cost, since one can't be productive immediately in a new area.

(and, to me, top mathematicians working on bridging areas of mathematics and looking for a unifying breakthrough is a great thing.)