With research, if you set your econ to 100% research, none of your planets will ever build anything.  The idea your planets that are completely developed can instead devote their production to research, while your developing planets can instead devote their production to chewing through their production queues ... setting your slider to 100% research means nothing in your build queues (or ship production queues) would ever be built.

So I did a bunch of testing on this at least as it relates to Economic Stimulus and Research Project. The projects grant production to their area, which is then modified by any planetary bonuses in the target area. The amount of production transferred depends on your raw production, modified by your planetary manufacturing bonus. The break-even point where projects become as good as setting your production wheel is around +300%. If your manufacturing bonus is more then that you should build a project; if not, you are better off setting your wheel.

I'm pretty sure DivineWrath is setting the wheel on the planetary level and not on the civ level.

Guys, these 'projects' are not supposed to be workable in Beta1;  however they do have some effect and apart from choosing any one of them for the automatic-upgrade benefit, the 'Fiesta' [something like that anyway] one does give a bonus to Approval of anything between 10% to 70% [probably depends on population levels].

Well, I wouldn't dismiss project right out of hand. Because in my test, I managed to make 100% manufac project much more profitable than 100% research (though I abuse the hell of Altarian Dark Research Lab. I didn't know it's a bug before this). 

100% Science Slider (~700 beakers)

100% Manufac with Research Project (3k beakers)

Galaxy run on the fuel of research project alone (I have about ~5 more mature planets running on 100% manufac research project. Each contributing 1k+). Look, ma, zero science .

Here are the manufac modifier.

And here are the science modifier.

Well, it was fun while it lasted .

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On a more realistic note, I loaded up another non game-breaking save using a non-matured planet and checked if project is better than raw research/wealth or not. It is in mid-late game. 

100% Science (~70 Beakers)

100% Manufac with Research Project (~140 beakers)

100% Wealth (~70 wealth)

100% Manufac With Wealth Project (~130 wealth))

And this is the base planet.

So, the answer is yes with caveat. From the base planet above, you can see that:

1. It is not mature. I can still upgrade a few of the improvements.
2. It was not properly specialized. The wealth or science improvements can be removed and replaced with 1 farm and 2 science/wealth building.
3. In this game, I only got three ideo trait. So, a lot of passive bonus is not in.
4. There are still some tech that can improve the buildings further, and tech that can add passive bonus (+manufac, + research bonus).
5. I still have two more terraform tech not researched.
6. It can still be enhanced further using starbase.
7. I did not use manufac/tech capital in the planet above.
8. The size of the planet is just 15 (mid tier).

So, all in all, I think that project can be better than raw 100% science/wealth, but only in on mid-late game (need time to research the tech, build all the improvements, starbase module, etc.). 

A single planet may not be as crazy as to carry the whole galaxy like the Altarian above (Dark Research Lab abuse), but it can definitely be more profitable than raw 100% science/wealth in mid-late game. Project is not recommended at early game at all.