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on Sociology of Economics |
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Issue of 2014‒02‒02
three papers chosen by Jonas Holmström Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration |
| By: | Hottenrott, Hanna; Lawson, Cornelia (University of Turin) |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically investigates complementarities between different sources of research funding with regard to academic publishing. We find for a sample of UK engineering academics that competitive funding is associated with an increase in ex-post publications but that industry funding decreases the marginal utility of public funding by lowering the publication and citation rate increases associated with public grants. However, when holding all other explanatory variables at their mean, the negative effect of the interaction does not translate into an effective decrease in publication and citation numbers. The paper also shows that the positive effect of public funding is driven by UK research council and charity grants and that EU funding has no significant effect on publication outcomes. |
| Date: | 2013–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uto:dipeco:201354&r=sog |
| By: | Goodall, Amanda H. (Cass Business School); McDowell, John M. (Arizona State University); Singell, Larry D. (University of Indiana Bloomington) |
| Abstract: | Much of human knowledge is produced in the world's university departments. There is little scientific evidence, however, about how those hundreds of thousands of departments are best organized and led. This study hand-collects longitudinal data on departmental chairpersons in 58 US universities over a 15-year period. There is one robust predictor of a department's future research output. After adjustment for a range of personal and institutional characteristics, departmental research productivity improves when the incoming department Chair's publications are highly cited. A one SD increase in citations is associated with a 0.5 SD later rise in departmental productivity. By contrast, the quality-weighted publication record per se of the incoming Chair has no predictive power. |
| Keywords: | scientific productivity, department chairs, expert leaders |
| JEL: | I12 I23 M51 M54 |
| Date: | 2014–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7903&r=sog |
| By: | Braga, Michela (University of Milan); Paccagnella, Marco (Bank of Italy); Pellizzari, Michele (University of Geneva) |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the impact of college teaching on students' academic achievement and labor market outcomes using administrative data from Bocconi University (Italy) matched with Italian tax records. The estimation exploits the random allocation of students to teachers in a fixed sequence of compulsory courses. We find that good teaching matters more for the labor market than for academic performance. Moreover, the professors who are best at improving the academic achievement of their best students are also the ones who boost their earnings the most. On the contrary, for low ability students the academic and labor market returns of teachers are largely uncorrelated. We also find that professors who are good at teaching high ability students are often not the best teachers for the least able ones. These findings can be rationalized in a model where teaching is a multi-dimensional activity with each dimension having differential returns on the students' academic outcomes and labor market success. |
| Keywords: | teacher quality, higher education |
| JEL: | I20 M55 |
| Date: | 2014–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7902&r=sog |