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on Sociology of Economics |
| By: | Makany, Milan (Erasmus University Rotterdam & Tinbergen Institute); Zinovyeva, Natalia (Department of Economics, University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | Science disproportionately relies on top researchers to evaluate the work of others, potentially diverting their scarce time from research, mentoring, and other service. We study this trade-off in Italy's national academic qualification system, where evaluators are randomly assigned to committees. Committees with better-published evaluators select candidates with stronger subsequent citation and career outcomes; they also place greater weight on publication impact rather than quantity. These effects partly reflect spillovers within committees: evaluators assigned to serve alongside more accomplished colleagues exert more effort and adjust their criteria. Assignment to a committee, however, reduces evaluators' subse quent publication output and PhD supervision, especially among top researchers. Research losses are especially large in the Social Sciences and Humanities, and among those working in small teams. More productive researchers are also disproportionately less likely to volunteer for service again. |
| Keywords: | expert evaluation, committees, academic promotions, decision quality, peer effects, opportunity costs JEL Classification: I23, D71, D83, M51, J45 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:815 |
| By: | Hochleitner, Anna; Tufano, Fabio; Facchini, Giovanni; Rueda, Valeria; Eberhardt, Markus |
| Abstract: | We study the gendered impact of recommendations at different stages of the hiring process, focusing on reference letters. First, we document that women receive fewer 'ability' and more 'grindstone' letters in the academic job market. Next, we conduct two experiments — with academic economists and a broader, college-educated, population — analyzing both recommendation and recruitment stages. These confirm that recommendations are gendered and impact recruitment outcomes. Gender views and strategic behavior based on erroneous beliefs explain referees’ choices. Importantly, we show that recruiters' failure to recognize the gendered nature of reference letters undermines efforts to improve diversity in hiring. |
| Keywords: | Gender; Diversity; Recruitment; Experiments |
| JEL: | J16 A11 D9 |
| Date: | 2025–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20139 |
| By: | Johan Fourie |
| Abstract: | I study how cheaper AI-assisted research changes the institutions that certify science. AI lowers the cost of producing a polished manuscript faster than it lowers the cost of judging whether the underlying contribution is valuable. Polish therefore loses information, entry expands and the average quality of the uncertified pool can fall. At a fixed standard, the willingness to pay for credible certification then rises because the outside option deteriorates. A certifier with market power can capture this premium; competition and alternative disclosure rules need not produce the same fee. With fixed review capacity and weak commitment, certification instead dilutes. In that extension, the partial Pigouvian toll on submissions and the shadow value of review capacity both rise with AI-assisted entry. The contribution is to connect the economics of AI and scientific production to signaling, certification and peer review: cheaper production shifts scarcity downstream, from making research look credible to verifying which research is credible. |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2607.13844 |
| By: | Hensvik, Lena; Nilsson, J Peter |
| Abstract: | We document the individual, organizational, and field-wide impacts following a public disclosure of substantial male bias in the competence assessments of newly minted PhDs applying for an important individual grant from the Swedish NIH. Post-disclosure, three key changes occurred: (i) a rapid phase-out of male-only review committees, (ii) adjustments in the decision-making processes of reviewers, and (iii) an elimination of the average male bias. We follow applicants’ publications, promotions, and earnings up to 18 years after application. We document an increase in the allocative efficiency of the research grants: the long-run research output of grantees assigned to review committees with an average pre-disclosure bias increased by 27 percent of a standard deviation compared to those assigned to unbiased committees. The disclosure of bias prompted coordinated actions with broader downstream academic and societal impact: female enrollment in biomedical PhD programs increased by 10 percentage points relative to other fields – in turn increasing female health focused research by 20 percent, without crowding out attention to men’s health. |
| JEL: | J16 I23 |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20210 |
| By: | Valérie Mignon; Marc Joëts; Christophe Hurlin |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a new framework for assessing scientific credibility using probabilistic retraction risk. We introduce the Zombie Integrity and Credibility Oversight (ZICO) framework, a multidimensional credibility score inspired by credit-scoring models in finance. Rather than relying on isolated indicators of misconduct, ZICO integrates heterogeneous signals extracted from the semantic characteristics of scientific manuscripts and the broader organization of scientific production to estimate the ex ante probability that a publication will eventually become problematic or be retracted. We apply the framework to a corpus of publications in economics and finance. Our findings show that retraction risk is driven primarily by linguistic and semantic characteristics rather than by conventional metadata, such as authorship or institutional affiliations. In particular, measures of readability, lexical diversity, textual complexity, and citation practices emerge as the strongest predictors of scientific credibility. These signals capture deeper structural and stylistic irregularities rather than differences in English language proficiency, thereby highlighting semantic organization as a robust marker of research integrity. We further develop a dynamic version of ZICO that continuously updates credibility assessments, allowing the framework to operate as an adaptive early-warning system for editorial screening. More fundamentally, our framework shifts the assessment of scientific integrity from the ex post detection of misconduct to the ex ante probabilistic evaluation of manuscript credibility. Beyond its predictive performance, ZICO provides a transparent and interpretable framework for editorial decision-making, research evaluation, and the governance of research integrity. |
| Keywords: | Zombie papers; Research integrity; Retraction risk; Scientific publishing; Natural language processing; Machine learning. |
| JEL: | C38 C53 D83 A11 O33 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drm:wpaper:2026-18 |
| By: | Lorenzo Cappellari (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore; Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore); Tommaso Colussi (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore; Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Università Cattolica del Sacro CuoreAuthor-Name: Lorenzo Cappellari); Marco Ovidi (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore; Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore) |
| Abstract: | We study how committee dynamics affect the recognition of academic excellence and its consequences in the labour market. Using administrative records from a major Italian university and exploiting exogenous variation in the gender composition of graduation committees, we show that equally prepared female graduates are significantly less likely to receive laude honors when evaluated by male-majority committees, while males are unaffected. The effect is concentrated among students advised by female or early-career faculty and disappears when a woman chairs the committee, pointing to the role of authority and influence in deliberations. We show pre-defense gender gaps in adivsors’ official laude requests in male-majority committees, consistent with nominations responding to expected committee support. Gaps in academic distinction translate into meaningful entry-wage penalties, contributing to gender gaps at labor-market entry. |
| Keywords: | Gender bias, academic evaluation, labor market outcomes. |
| JEL: | J16 I23 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctc:serie1:def154 |