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on Sociology of Economics |
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Issue of 2013‒08‒16
four papers chosen by Jonas Holmström Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration |
| By: | Jürgen Janger; Anna Strauss; David Campbell |
| Abstract: | Asymmetric international mobility of highly talented scientists is well documented. We try contributing to the explanation of this phenomenon, looking at the “competitiveness” of higher education systems in terms of being able to attract talented scientists in their field. We characterise countries’ capability to offer attractive entry positions into academic careers using the results of a large scale experiment on the determinants of job choice in academia. Examined areas refer to the level of salaries, quality of life, PhD-studies, career perspectives, research organisation, balance between teaching and research, funding and probability of working with high quality peers. Our results indicate that overall, the US research universities offer the most attractive jobs for early stage researchers, consistent with the asymmetric flow of talented scientists to the US. Behind the US is a group of well performing European countries, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. Austria and Germany are next, closely followed by France, which in turn is followed by Italy. Spain and Poland are, according to our results, least able to offer attractive entry positions to an academic career. |
| Keywords: | Academic careers, academic labour market, university organisation, brain drain |
| JEL: | I23 I25 I28 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feu:wfewop:y:2013:m:8:d:0:i:37&r=sog |
| By: | Jürgen Janger; Klaus Nowotny |
| Abstract: | Based on a unique survey, we conduct a stated choice experiment to examine the determinants of career choice in academia. Both early and later stage researchers value a balance between teaching and research, appropriate salaries, working with high-quality peers and good availability of external grants. Attractive academic jobs for early stage researchers feature in addition a combination of early independence and career (tenure) perspectives; later stage researchers favour jobs which make it easy to take up new lines of research, which pay according to a public scheme including a performance element and where research funding is provided by the university. Ourfindings have important implications for the structure of academic careers and for the organisational design of research universities. Furthermore, they shed light on the institutional determinants of the asymmetric mobility of highly talented scientists between the EU and the U. S. |
| Keywords: | Academic careers, academic labour market, university organisation, brain drain |
| JEL: | I23 I25 I28 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feu:wfewop:y:2013:m:8:d:0:i:36&r=sog |
| By: | Enrico Moretti; Daniel Wilson |
| Abstract: | We evaluate the effects of state-provided financial incentives for biotech companies, which are part of a growing trend of placed-based policies designed to spur innovation clusters. We estimate that the adoption of subsidies for biotech employers by a state raises the number of star biotech scientists in that state by about 15 percent over a three year period. A 10% decline in the user cost of capital induced by an increase in R&D tax incentives raises the number of stars by 22%. Most of the gains are due to the relocation of star scientist to adopting states, with limited effect on the productivity of incumbent scientists already in the state. The gains are concentrated among private sector inventors. We uncover little effect of subsidies on academic researchers, consistent with the fact that their incentives are unaffected. Our estimates indicate that the effect on overall employment in the biotech sector is of comparable magnitude to that on star scientists. Consistent with a model where workers are fairly mobile across states, we find limited effects on salaries in the industry. We uncover large effects on employment in the non-traded sector due to a sizable multiplier effect, with the largest impact on employment in construction and retail. Finally, we find limited evidence of a displacement effect on states that are geographically close, or states that economically close as measured by migration flows. |
| Keywords: | Public policy ; Biotechnology ; Technological innovations ; Research and development |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedfwp:2013-17&r=sog |
| By: | Krzysztof Leja (Gdansk University of Technology, Gdansk, Poland); Emilia Nagucka (Gdansk University of Technology, Gdansk, Poland) |
| Abstract: | Authors take the issue of change in the modern university. Assuming that the objective of the university is, in addition to the mass education, training the elite of intellectual entrepreneurs (Kwiatkowski, 2000; Kwiatkowski, Sadlak, 2003) - prospective leaders of the knowledge-based society, it is proposed the creative destruction of the university organization, the essence of which is to move the axis of the basic organizational units of the university, such as departments, into teams, and coordination axis of the university move into units. The proposal is embedded in the Schumpeter’s idea of creative destruction (Schumpeter, 1960), and refers to the Burton Clark’s concept of the entrepreneurial university (Clark, 1998, 2004), the concept of ambidextrous organization (March, 1991, Tushman, O'Reilly III, 1996; Birkinshaw, Gibson, 2004), third generation university by Johan Wissema (2009) and the concept of the knowledge-based university, using the paradigm of knowledge-based organization (Leja, 2011). Additionally, the paper presents the necessary conditions of the proposed change, and the risk associated with it. Authors try to prove, using Gareth Morgan’s metaphors (2001, 2005), that the proposed change is the transition from mechanistic - organism university to the university described by metaphors of organisms and self-organization. |
| Keywords: | creative destruction, ambidextrous organization, Schumpeter, university, Morgan |
| JEL: | D23 D83 I23 |
| Date: | 2013–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gdk:wpaper:14&r=sog |