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on Sociology of Economics |
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Issue of 2011‒11‒14
four papers chosen by Jonas Holmström Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration |
| By: | Bruno S. Frey; Margit Osterloh |
| Abstract: | Research rankings based on publications and citations today dominate governance of academia. Yet they have unintended side effects on individual scholars and academic institutions and can be counterproductive. They induce a substitution of the “taste for science” by a “taste for publication”. We suggest as alternatives careful selection and socialization of scholars, supplemented by periodic self-evaluations and awards. Neither should rankings be a basis for the distributions of funds within universities. Rather, qualified individual scholars should be supported by basic funds to be able to engage in new and unconventional research topics and methods. |
| Keywords: | Academic governance, rankings, motivation, selection, socialization |
| JEL: | A10 D02 H83 L23 M50 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:039&r=sog |
| By: | Claudia Pérez Prieto; Carlos Marmolejo Duarte |
| Abstract: | Since the last quarter of the 20th century, most of the world population has experimented an important process of globalization, mainly due to; the accelerated knowledge production, the increase of intangible capital on a macroeconomic scale, the increase in levels of innovation, and the ICT revolution that have democratized access to information and knowledge dissemination. This new economic base, located in cities, is supported on knowledge and information as sources of production and competitiveness. The number of scientific publications on indexed journals is a scale, often used to measure the degree of strength of the scientific sector of a particular place. But this scale ignores the quality of the counted works, i.e. the impact they have generated in the scientific world. This work seeks to highlight the dynamics of scientific production in Spain. Specifically, it aims to analyze the quantity and quality of scientific publications in the period between 2001 and 2007. For this analysis, the quantity is measured by the number of scientific papers published by researchers from a city and the quality by the number of times that works signed by scientists from a city, have been cited by researchers around the world. In this study we establish a bibliometric analysis based on: 1) the number of scientific contributions to municipalities of more than 30,000 people whose information is derived from the SCI-E and 2) the number of citations for the top 10 cities with information derived from Scopus. Finally, we contrast the results of the more representatives cities, with the aim of clarify the relationship between the quantity and quality between quantity and quality of the scientific publication. The results suggest a concentration of quantity and quality of the scientific production in the Spanish metropolitan areas. However, we can provide that ranking who have the main cities in the context of national scientific publication is not similar for both parameters. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p858&r=sog |
| By: | Durante, Ruben; Labartino, Giovanna; Perotti, Roberto |
| Abstract: | Decentralization can lead to "good" or "bad" outcomes depending on the socio-cultural norms of the targeted communities. We investigate this issue by looking at the evolution of familism and nepotism in the Italian academia before and after the 1998 reform, which decentralized the recruitment of professors from the national to the university level. To capture familism we use a novel dataset on Italian university professors between 1988 and 2008 focusing on the informative content of last names. We construct two indices of "homonymy" which capture the concentration of last names in a given academic department relative to that in the underlying general population. Our results suggest that increased autonomy by local university officials resulted in a significant increase in the incidence of familism in areas characterized by low civic capital but not in areas with higher civic capital. |
| Keywords: | Civic capital; Familism; Higher education |
| JEL: | D71 D73 I23 Z1 |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8645&r=sog |
| By: | Ruben Durante; Giovanna Labartino; Roberto Perotti |
| Abstract: | Decentralization can lead to "good" or "bad" outcomes depending on the socio-cultural norms of the targeted communities. We investigate this issue by looking at the evolution of familism and nepotism in the Italian academia before and after the 1998 reform, which decentralized the recruitment of professors from the national to the university level. To capture familism we use a novel dataset on Italian university professors between 1988 and 2008 focusing on the informative content of last names. We construct two indices of “homonymy” which capture the concentration of last names in a given academic department relative to that in the underlying general population. Our results suggest that increased autonomy by local university officials resulted in a significant increase in the incidence of familism in areas characterized by low civic capital but not in areas with higher civic capital. |
| JEL: | D71 D73 I23 J44 Z1 |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17572&r=sog |