Yeah, that's the way the commenter I responded to wants me to view it, but I'm skeptical of that way of looking at it. I view it as specialization, where two people each utilizing their strengths can accomplish more together than they would by simply aggregating their separate products. Why would I demand that someone who excels at research must necessarily be a fantastic writer, and why would I exclude a person who can make meaningful contributions to human knowledge but nonetheless needs help communicating? If results are freely shared (which is why open-access is so important!) science is not a competition because "less wealthy" and "wealthy" institutions but rather a collaborative process working toward shared goals.

If you look at it as the university itself generating the research output (university labs, editors, and other resources), then much more natural. It makes sense that a university with more money would be able to produce more research.