Do large departments make academics more productive? Agglomeration and peer effects in research

Pierre-Philippe Combes and Clement Bosquet

No 9401, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We study the effect of a large set of department characteristics on individual publication records. We control for many individual time-varying characteristics, individual fixed-effects and reverse causality. Department characteristics have an explanatory power that can be as high as that of individual characteristics. The departments that generate most externalities are those where academics are homogeneous in terms of publication performance and have diverse research fields, and, to a lesser extent, large departments, with more women, older academics, star academics and foreign co-authors. Department specialisation in a field also favours publication in that field. More students per academic does not penalise publication. At the individual level, women and older academics publish less, while the average publication quality increases with average number of authors per paper, individual field diversity, number of published papers and foreign co-authors.

Keywords: Economic geography; Economics of science; Networks; Productivity determinants; Selection and endogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I3 J24 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-geo, nep-net, nep-soc and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP9401 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Sorting and agglomeration economies in French economics departments (2017)
Working Paper: Do large departments make academics more productive? Sorting and agglomeration economies in research (2015)
Working Paper: Do Large Departments Make Academics More Productive? Agglomeration and Peer Effects in Research (2013)
Working Paper: Do Large Departments Make Academics More Productive? Agglomeration and Peer Effects in Research (2013)
Working Paper: Do large departments make academics more productive? agglomeration and peer effects in research (2013)
Working Paper: Do large departments make academics more productive? Agglomeration and peer effects in research (2013)
Working Paper: Do Large Departments Make Academics More Productive? Agglomeration and Peer Effects in Research (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9401

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP9401

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().