The Interaction of Publications and Appointments: New Evidence on Academic Economists

Abstract. Using a new panel dataset comprising publication and appointment data for 889 German academic economists over a quarter of a century, we confirm the familiar hypothesis that publications are important for professorial appointments, but find only a small negative effect of appointments on subsequent research productivity. In fact, a simple theoretical model leads us to hypothesise that no such effect exists for top researchers (``stars‘‘), which is borne out by our estimation results. We also provide some evidence of the effects of the fundamental reform of economics in Germany and of affirmative action procedures. Introduction. Most economists would agree, even though a few might silently deplore, that the key aspects of a career in economics can be succinctly summarised by the classic quip ``publish or perish''. The economics of education is rife with empirical papers on research productivity and career paths in economics. One part of the literature on academic career focuses on the effect of publishing on academic salaries. A clearly visible result of these papers is a significant and positive impact of publications on the academics' earnings \cite{Diamond1986,GrRe1997}. Beyond this there is a second stream of literature focusing on the changes in publications over the academic life cycle. As early as 1979, Cole showed that the performance of academic scientists fluctuates over the life cycle. More concretely, \citeN{LeSt1991} find for several non-economic research fields that scientists become less productive as they age. \citeN{HaOs1998} confirm this for the economic research field. In contrast to many other labour markets, the market for academics is characterised by the existence of tenure contracts. Although this assures the possibility to produce new, creative, non-popular research output, it also may lower the \emph{ex post} incentives to publish. Therefore, some authors focus on the question if tenure negatively influences the publication output. As a main result of this literature publication decreases after tenure but the decline in productivity sets in very slowly \cite{GoSa1995,HuZi1995}. Particularly the top researches show little tendency for a decline in publication productivity \cite{GoSa1995}. Although most of the literature focuses on the US or the UK market, there are also a few papers analysing the situation in Germany. In this paper we analyse the effect of publication on the probability to get an appointment as well as the reversed effect of an appointment on subsequent publication behaviour for German economists. Contrary to the existing literature we do not cull our data from curricula vitae but from two officious journals. Thus, we use a new panel data set comprising publication and appointment data for almost 900 German economists over a quarter of a century (from 1981 to 2006). A main conclusion from our research is that while we can confirm the overwhelming importance of research productivity for being offered an appointment, we find little evidence of a disincentive effect of tenure on research productivity. Possible explanations for this include the fact that additional (post-appointment) efforts can still elicit further job offers.