Stimulating Graduates' Research-Oriented Careers: Does Academic Research Matter ?

Mauro Sylos Labini and Natalia Zinovyeva

LEM Papers Series from Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy

Abstract: This paper investigates whether the quality of higher education and, in particular, its research performance stimulate graduates' research-oriented careers. More specifically, exploiting a very rich data-set on university graduates and the higher education institutions they attended, we empirically study whether graduates from universities and programs that display better academic research records are more likely to be enroled in PhDs or employed as researchers three years after graduation. Controlling for a number of individual and university covariates and using different proxies for research performance, we find that the likelihood of entering a research-oriented career increases with the quality of academic research. Notably, the inclusion of university fixed-effects shows that this result does not stem from unobserved university heterogeneity. Our finding is stronger for graduates in science, medicine, and engineering.

Keywords: academic research; labor market for scientist; post-graduate education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 O30 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-09-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Stimulating graduates' research-oriented careers: does academic research matter? (2011)
Working Paper: Stimulating Graduates' Research-Oriented Careers: Does Academic Research Matter? (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2009/12

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