The Research Productivity of New PhDs in Economics
The Surprisingly High Non-Success of the Successful
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4029155 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John P Conley (0000-0003-3675-8529, Professor of Economics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.), Ali Sina Önder (0000-0002-6646-409X, Lecturer, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany and an Affiliated Researcher, Uppsala Center for Fiscal Studies, Uppsala, Sweden. .) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 205-216 |
| Publication date | 2014-08-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Economic Perspectives (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0895-3309 • E-ISSN: 1944-7965 |
| Publisher | American Economic Association (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1257/jep.28.3.205 |
| OpenAlex | W1977369817 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 14 |
| References cited | 6 |
We study the research productivity of new graduates from North American PhD programs in economics from 1986 to 2000. We find that research productivity drops off very quickly with class rank at all departments, and that the rank of the graduate departments themselves provides a surprisingly poor prediction of future research success. For example, at the top ten departments as a group, the median graduate has fewer than 0.03 American Economic Review (AER)-equivalent publications at year six after graduation, an untenurable record almost anywhere. We also find that PhD graduates of equal percentile rank from certain lower-ranked departments have stronger publication records than their counterparts at higher-ranked departments. In our data, for example, Carnegie Mellon's graduates at the 85th percentile of year-six research productivity outperform 85th percentile graduates of the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, and Berkeley. These results suggest that even the top departments are not doing a very good job of training the great majority of their students to be successful research economists. Hiring committees may find these results helpful when trying to balance class rank and place of graduate in evaluating job candidates, and current graduate students may wish to re-evaluate their academic strategies in light of these findings
Demographic economics · Economic growth · Economics · Graduate students · Medical education · Percentile · Percentile rank · Political science · Productivity · Statistics · Computer Science · Engineering · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies · Game Theory and Applications · Mathematics · Medicine · Psychology · Sports Analytics and Performance
Broken engagement
The hierarchy in economics and its implications
Exploring the determinants of research performance for early-career researchers
Is there a differentiated gender effect of collaboration with super-cited authors? Evidence from junior researchers in economics
Do first-generation immigrant scholars outperform native researchers? Evidence from US business schools
Top graduate programmes in economics
Catching Up Is Hard to Do
The Geography and Concentration of Authorship in the Top Five
On the importance of promoting graduate funding opportunities
The lions–foxes dilemma
Effects of work environment and collaboration on research productivity in Vietnamese social sciences
PhD funding as a determinant of PhD and career research performance
Hiring Your Friends
When forgiveness beats permission
| Citations per year | 1.4 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2016 - 2025 (10) |
| Highly cited | No |